Researchers discover otters like the beach as much as we do
At daybreak, life begins to stir at Moss Landing Harbor. The
tide has retreated. Gulls dive in and out of the water, while other
birds dig their pointy beaks into the sand. The skies are gray and
a mist fills the air even as the landscape brightens. A handful of
sea otters napping on the beach stand up and walk into the
water.
Researchers discover otters like the beach as much as we do
At daybreak, life begins to stir at Moss Landing Harbor. The tide has retreated. Gulls dive in and out of the water, while other birds dig their pointy beaks into the sand. The skies are gray and a mist fills the air even as the landscape brightens. A handful of sea otters napping on the beach stand up and walk into the water.
Yes, sea otters hang out on the shore. It is a behavior Robert Scoles, a retired Aromas resident, first noticed in 2006 when he started volunteering with a nonprofit group called Team Ocean. He saw the sea otters of Moss Landing “hauling out,” a term researchers use for when otters or other marine mammals go ashore.
“I talked to people who said they do it when they are sick or injured,” Scoles said. “Or females getting away from males.”
Scoles stopped by from time to time to see if he could see a pattern in when the otters come out of the water, especially since these animals seemed healthy and it is a largely male population in Elkhorn Slough. In recent months around 130 animals have been observed in the Moss Landing Harbor.
“I saw hundreds of tracks,” he said. “I thought it might be something to do with the tide.”
He and a friend, Ronald Eby, connected with Daniela Maldini, the chief scientist for Okeanis, a Monterey Bay nonprofit that does research on sea otters. She received a grant from Earth Watch Institute, a national nonprofit, to collect data on the hauling out behavior.
Maldini first started studying Southern Sea Otters, the variety that lives along the Central Coast, in 1994 when she was a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Lab.
“We started seeing sea otters hauled out at first in very small numbers in 2006,” Maldini said. “Robert … told us about his observations he was doing in his spare time and we compared notes.”
Most books on otter biology say sea otters don’t haul out unless they are sick or injured, Maldini said.
“It was really bizarre to see healthy otters,” she said.
The group has observed as many as 100 otters on shore at one time. Though more data needs to be collected to draw conclusions, Eby and Scoles say more otters come ashore at night and when the wind chill is higher.
Otters appear graceful and playful in the open ocean or in exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but they often look awkward when they come ashore. When the otters first emerge from the water, most of them drag their hind paws along the sand, but once they are on drier land they will often lift their lower body into an arch and move much like a weasel. They move awkwardly much of the time, but when they are in a hurry, they move quickly. Scoles has videos of otters running back into the water on his digital camera that he shows enthusiastically to visitors to the Harbor that shows them moving nearly as gracefully on land as they do underwater.
Scoles, Eby and other volunteers get together every other Thursday for a 24-hour observation of how many otters are on the shore, in the water and what the weather conditions are like. They recently started recording the locations the otters hang out in on land and in the water, as well.
One recent Thursday morning, Eby had been out at the harbor since 1 a.m. and every half hour, he did a count of otters and recorded the temperature and wind chill.
“They are very alert and have good senses,” Eby said. “They are very skittish.”
When doing his counts, Eby, who dressed in all black with a black sock hat to cover his head, crawled under one of the roaps that fences off the upper sand dune above the beach and then popped his head up just enough to see the otters below.
Shortly after 6 a.m, Scoles showed up for his shift. Dressed in a red parka and a baseball hat, he hopped around on crutches due to a recent foot injury. He planned to do counts every half hour until 6 p.m., when Eby would return for another shift.
Since he started data collection, Scoles said he believes there are historical accounts that point to the behavior not being new.
“[Jean-Francois de] la Perouse, a French explorer, wrote that he observed the Costanoans hunting otters by hiding in the rocks and waiting for them to come onto land,” Scoles said. Scoles is talking about a journal account written long before 1800s.
Michelle Staedler, the sea otter research coordinator for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said they have been aware of hauling out behavior for the 20 years she has worked with the aquarium.
Speculation as to why the otters come ashore is varied. Scoles and Eby said they think it is tied to weather, while Staedler said it has to do with kelp.
“It’s more in the spring all along the coast,” Staedler said. “We are watching them daily and we think it’s more because the kelp has been ripped out during winter storms so there is less kelp in the area.”
In addition in the Moss Landing Harbor area, the water is shallower and there is less kelp.
“It’s kind of fun and exciting because so many are hauling out,” Staedler said. “It’s just because they are seeing so many in one place at one time.”
There are other hot spots along the coast where otters haul out, around Pt. Lobos and the Hopkins Marine Station, but most of the locations are isolated and human traffic is rare. Northern Sea Otters in Russia are very well known for hauling out onto ice floes.
Maldini has other ideas about the behavior.
“I think they are learning from the others,” she said. “The reason otters naturally do this is probably to get away from the cold. Even though they have very good insulation, probably sleeping out of water is more efficient in terms of energy consumed.”
She speculated that a few otters who went through rehabiliation may have learned the behavior and taught it to other otters once returned to the wild.
Maldini has been gone from the area since November, since she does research in other parts of the country, but will return in the summer. In the meantime, Scoles and Eby have taken the lead on collecting data.
“Robert and Ron – they are so dedicated,” she said. “If it wasn’t for them and what they are doing…they have helped me a lot.”
Keeping sea otters safe
While researchers don’t all agree on what is causing local sea otters to climb out onto beaches in Moss Landing, they do agree that educating the public is important. Otters are a protected species and there is a state fine of $25,000 for killing an otter. But many people are unaware what behaviors will disturb the animals.
Michelle Staedler and Daniela Maldini offered tips for sharing the waters with the marine mammals.
Both agree that humans getting too close is an issue.
“Don’t get too close to them,” Staedler said. “Getting too close, you are going to change their behavior … they do bite, they can bite and it really hurts.”
Maldini and Staedler agreed that keeping distance from sleeping otters is most important. Staedler likened disturbing sleeping otters to what it would be like to have someone walk in and out of your room every five minutes.
“When they are wet, they spend a lot of time grooming to maintain their fur condition,” Maldini said. “When they rest they want to be partially dry and every time they are disturbed by a boater, they get wet when they dive down and then they have to spend another half hour getting dry so they can go back to sleep.”
She also suggested that people not make direct eye contact with the animals because they may react as they would with predators.
“It is a matter of learning how to approach the animals and when not to approach,” Maldini said.
In addition, if an animal appears to be injured, passersby can contact local agencies for help.
“If you have a concern that an animal isn’t okay or that it is hauled out because it is sick, call the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Marine Mammal Center.”
To volunteer with the sea otter monitoring group, e-mail Robert Scoles at ro**********@sb*******.net. For more information on sea otters or to report an injured animal, visit www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/sorac.asp or call 648-4800. The Marine Mammal Center can be reached at 633-6298.
