sea otter
- Also called:
- great sea otter
sea otter, (Enhydra lutris), completely marine otter species of the northern Pacific, usually found in kelp beds. Floating on its back, it opens mollusks by smashing them on a stone balanced on its chest. The large hind feet are broad and flipperlike. The thick lustrous coat is reddish to dark brown. The sea otter is the largest otter, reaching 100–160 cm (40–65 inches) long and weighing 16–40 kg (35–90 pounds) when fully grown. It inhabits coastal waters from the Kuril Islands to the Aleutian Islands southward to the coast of California.
Sea otters feed mainly on sea urchins and on crabs and other shellfish. The captured prey is eaten at sea while the otter swims on its back. Rocks are typically used to break open crabs and other shellfish, whereas sea urchins are crushed with the forefeet and teeth. Consuming herbivorous urchins (genus Strongylocentrotus) enables kelp forests and the fish associated with them to flourish. However, large numbers of sea otters can deplete shellfish populations, competing with fisheries for crabs, clams, and abalones. Female sea otters give birth in water to only one young at a time, and the young remains dependent on the mother until six to eight months of age.
Although sea otters spend most of their time in the ocean, they come to the shore on occasion to escape predators in the water, rest, or warm up. Often resting near beds of kelp, where they rely on their buoyant bodies to float on their backs, sea otters can gather in groups of up to 1,000 individuals, grasping one another’s forefeet to create large rafts or pods.
The sea otter had been hunted almost to extinction for its fur by 1910. After becoming aware of this diminishing resource, the United States, Great Britain (for Canada), Japan, and Russia signed the North Pacific Sealing Convention in 1911 to protect sea otters and northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus). Sea otters recovered modestly during the 20th century; however, their populations remain widely separated. Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources listed the sea otter as a species of least concern in 1996, population declines since the 1980s due to the effects of pollution from oil spills, conflicts with fisheries, predation by sharks and killer whales, and disease prompted the organization to reclassify the sea otter as an endangered species in 2000.
Some authorities also consider the marine otter (Lontra felina), a species that lives along the rocky Pacific coast of South America, to be a type of sea otter, because it hunts in shoreline and nearshore ocean areas, preying on crabs and other marine invertebrates. Unlike its northern cousin, however, the marine otter spends much more time on land, where it makes its dens in sea caves, along windswept beaches, or in gaps within rock outcrops.