every morning of the summer
a team of marine biologists heads out
into simpson bay
one of the remote inlets of alaska's
prince william sound
they are part of the longest-running
field research on sea otter behavior
what's it doing resting
classic otter crew has traveled some
1500 miles to alaska to catch a glimpse
of otters in the wild
that's because there aren't any otters
along the oregon coast
there used to be so the question is why
aren't there any otters
and will there ever be otters again
today there's only one spot on the
entire oregon coast to watch sea otters
and there are only three of them nuka
shuster
and oswald
[Music]
good boy we are always training our
otters something new to keep them
mentally stimulated
they're always trying to think two steps
ahead of me
and so i have to think five steps ahead
of them
specialists like brittany interact with
the otters every day
part of the morning routine is to coax
the otters onto scales to monitor their
weight
54.4 in doing so they've come to learn
what these otters need to stay healthy
and it happens to be something that
oregon has an abundance so we have some
butter clam and squid
shrimp every morning brittany and her
team prepare the otter's breakfast
so he's eating about 15 pounds of food
every single day
all restaurant quality seafood
so that ends up costing us about 22 000
a year just to feed one of our sea
otters under brittany's care
the three otters of the oregon coast
aquarium seem pretty content with their
buckets of seafood
but it seems like there'd be plenty of
food for them to eat out in the ocean
so if not for a lack of food why are
there no otters on the oregon coast
here in simpson bay the otters crack
open clams
or feast on strands of kelp where fish
have laid delicious roe
the otters eat about 25 of their body
weight in seafood
every day they need to eat so much to
stay warm in the icy water
but all of these calories aren't going
into a thick layer of fat
most marine mammals rely on blubber for
insulation
sea otters are the only marine mammal
that relies exclusively
on fur sea otters have about the same
body temperature as us
and would quickly go hypothermic in the
frigid pacific water
if not for a unique adaptation when we
see
otters out here grooming what we think
they're doing
is felting their fur the very fine
under hairs as they're grooming them
they become very very
tightly intertwined until the spaces
between the hairs are so fine
that water cannot penetrate and that's
how they maintain an
air layer next to their skin their fur
is the key to their survival in the cold
water
but it almost led to their demise it was
their luxurious pelts that brought top
dollar during the era of the fur trade
sea otters once thrived from the
aleutian islands to baja
but they had been hunted to near
extinction during the fur trade
oregon's last wild sea otter was killed
in 1906.
sea otters no longer occurred in
anywhere outside the aleutians or prince
william sound alaska
none in washington not in oregon none in
british columbia
they were gone but a handful of otters
survived in some of the most remote
pockets of alaska
these otters in simpson bay are
descendants of the original wild otters
but then at the height of the cold war
the otters faced an unexpected threat
in the late 1960s the
atomic energy commission decided to test
some nuclear
devices on the aleutian islands three
two one
[Music]
zero time
[Music]
plans to test nuclear bombs in alaska
prompted an urgency to round up some of
the last wild otters
and relocate them along their former
range
wildlife biologists came up from oregon
to help with the effort
these men prepare to launch the most
most ambitious transplant experiment to
date
unfortunately many otters drowned in the
nets
and moore died in transit
the surviving otters were then taken to
the small fishing town of port orford
and boated out into the pacific well the
otters were
out of their minds by the time they were
towed that far
and they had to practically force them
to get out of the pens
it wasn't at all what we would call a
passive release
you know they didn't know this a lot of
this was all groundbreaking stuff
despite the hard lessons learned the
relocation project seemed to have gotten
at least enough otters to oregon for a
start
ron was a graduate student at oregon
state university at the time
and signed up to monitor oregon's new
sea otters
in the first few seasons ron spotted
babies when i found those first pups man
i was really excited i said this is
gonna happen
but then ron began to notice fewer and
fewer otters
after only 11 years the otters had
disappeared completely
for the second time in history oregon
lost its sea otters
people say things like well maybe they
were all shot or something and
i don't think that was an issue i think
they just left
i really do but what's confusing
is that the otter relocations to
washington and british columbia
worked
so what is it about oregon's coastline
beneath the surface that can explain the
absence of otters
graduate student dominique cohn is using
the latest technology to find out
we can see that within this porterford
area we have
relatively shallow depths some kelp and
the location of
redfish rocks marine reserve which could
potentially increase
sea otter reestablishment dominique's
maps are based on computer modeling
so he goes to the shoreline to confirm
if there's indeed good habitat that
could support otters
now what's interesting about sea otters
is that they
eat several different species of prey
but by far they prefer to consume
urchins
because they are not a very mobile
species which means that they're
fairly easy to catch the abundance of
urchins in the port orford area
indicates that the habitat might be good
for the otters and the otters in turn
might be good for the ocean habitat it
has to do with the relationship between
otters
urchins and kelp
kelp forest once grew thick here but the
kelp has been grazed down by sea urchins
we know that when you have high
densities of sea otters they can
consume and drastically reduce urchin
densities
but what that does is that alleviates a
lot of the urchins grazing
and browsing pressure on the kelp and
that allows the kelp to grow
more abundantly now what's interesting
is that when you get more kelp
that provides habitat for a whole suite
of other species
and so it's not that when we bring sea
otters back into the ecosystem
they can improve the overall health of
the ecosystem
our understanding on their ecology and
natural behavior have really come
a long ways over the last 50 years but
even though we know
a lot about them now so we really need
to start answering some of these
questions
if we are going to help managers make
that decision in order to bring them
back
if nothing is done to bring back otters
by human power
scientists say they may slowly swim
southwards to oregon on their own
but this could be years decades or
maybe never i'd i'd love to come over
here and look out behind me like i did
that one time and see
you know a little raft of sea otters
i'm afraid it's not gonna happen in my
lifetime
unless we bring them back