Southern sea otters once lived across California, including Humboldt Bay. Now, only about 3,000 live along the coast of the state.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a feasibility assessment in 2022 about reintroducing the animal along the coast and found an effort to bring the species further north to be legal, with a positive socioeconomic and biological impact. The USFWS will host a meeting Sunday in Arcata to collect public input on the issue.
“Sea otters have this beautiful, thick pelt, and that’s why they were just totally wiped out,” said Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that formally submitted a petition in January asking the UFSWS to move ahead with reintroduction.
She said the current population of southern sea otters in California came from a group of around 50, found near Monterey Bay after European settlers decimated populations in the 1700s and 1800s.
While reintroduction efforts in the 1960s and 1970s were successful in Washington, the southern sea otter didn’t take in Northern California or Oregon.
Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper, said in Humboldt County, there have been some reports of visiting sea otters, but none have made a home along the North Coast of California. She said that Russian trappers who enslaved Indigenous people from what is now Alaska decimated the population locally.
“They were very successful in a very short amount of time,” said Kalt.
Jeffers said sea otters are keystone species — they eat sea urchins and keep the population in check. Otters could play a part in the restoration of local kelp forests because urchins have been eating a lot of kelp.
“The kelp ecosystem is so out of balance now — we know the importance of the kelp forest for abalone, but also for all kinds of juvenile fish,” said Kalt.
The abalone, which has great historic significance for people across the coast, has been hit hard, with the Northern California recreational red abalone fishery being closed since 2017.
“Reintroduction of sea otters appears to be necessary because our remnant sea otters in California don’t appear to be substantially expanding their range. To return sea otters to their historic range across the state, and here in Humboldt, it appears human intervention is necessary,” wrote Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center in an email.
He added that it is unclear if reintroduction is feasible in Humboldt County or if it will be prioritized versus other areas in California.
One impact of sea otters, which successfully repopulated Washington and Alaska, has been competition with fishermen. Brenda Konar, professor of Marine Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks said in an email that otters in Alaska have forced farmers to change from lantern nets to cages to protect their catch.
Ecotourism was also considered in the USFWS study, noting that the economic benefits of ecotourism and carbon sequestration in kelp forests outweighed losses in the shellfish industry.
If you go
When: Sunday from noon to 3 p.m.
Where: Cal Poly Humboldt, College Creek Complex, Great Hall Community Center Building, Room 260, 1 Rossow St., Arcata, CA 95521
More information: https://www.fws.gov/project/exploring-potential-sea-otter-reintroduction
Sage Alexander can be reached at 707-441-0504.
