The push is on to return sea otters to Oregon, Northern California coasts

After missing from the Oregon coast for more than a century, sea otters are getting a step closer to staging a comeback.

Local tribes and nonprofits have received a $1.56 million grant to lead the planning effort to reintroduce the endearing mammals that are considered a keystone species crucial to restoring the state’s dwindling underwater kelp forests and controlling invasive sea urchin populations.

“They’re the guardians of the kelp forests,” said Jane Bacchieri, executive director of the Elakha Alliance, an Oregon-based nonprofit focused on bringing back sea otters.

“When we are missing sea otters, those kelp forests are far, far more vulnerable to permutations in the environment, whether it’s ocean warming conditions or the explosion of invasive sea urchins.”

The alliance is among the groups that partnered with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, several other coastal tribes and nonprofits on the grant to repopulate an 800-mile stretch along the coasts of Oregon and Northern California with sea otters.

They have been working for years to reestablish the animals in Oregon and the grant will help them build expertise, complete key scientific studies, conduct socio-economic assessments, choose potential sites and build support, including with a shellfish industry that remains strongly opposed.

Advocates hope their plan will spur the federal government to put sea otter reintroduction on a fast-track, possibly returning the animals within a decade.

FAILED REINTRODUCTION

Sea otters were once abundant on the West Coast, from Baja California up through Alaska.

They co-existed for millennia with Indigenous people who saw them as respected kin and as symbols of abundance and prestige. Though they were hunted by some for their hides, sea otter robes could be worn only by people of high status ensuring they were not over-hunted.

“Sea otters have represented prosperity to us,” said Robert Kentta, a Siletz Tribal Council member and board member of the Elakha Alliance. “There’s the story of the girl who married Sea Otter. After the marriage, Sea Otter would leave gifts on the beach for her community.”

But the animals were hunted down to extinction during the fur trade era. The last known Oregon sea otter was shot in 1906 at Otter Rock. Only a few remnant populations remained in Alaska and California.

The largest members of the weasel family, sea otters have the densest fur of all the animals on Earth. Unlike most other marine mammals, sea otters don’t have a blubber layer. Instead, they rely on their thick fur to keep warm and must eat 25% of their body weight in food every day. Their diets include sea urchins, crabs, mussels and clams. They can even use tools – rocks – to break hard-shelled prey.

In the early 1970s, nearly 100 sea otters from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands were brought to Oregon. About half were released in Port Orford in 1970 and 1971 and the rest at Cape Arago in 1971.

The reintroduction didn’t go well – and it’s still unclear why.

Some animals quickly left the area. And while a number of pups were reported, the otters declined dramatically by 1975 and disappeared entirely just 10 years after they had arrived.

Sea otters were also reintroduced in the early 1970s to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and Southeast Alaska where, unlike in Oregon, they have thrived. There are now about 30,000 sea otters in Southeast Alaska and about 2,000 in Washington, Bacchieri said.

There’s also a southern sea otter population in Central California, counting several thousand animals; it’s listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in California.

Oregon, on the other hand, has sea otters only at the Oregon Zoo and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The state has had an occasional wild sea otter sighting – most likely male otters swimming in from the Olympic Peninsula. The last one, in July, caused a stir and much enthusiasm when two sea otters were seen swimming near Ecola Point, just north of Cannon Beach – also probably from Washington.

PUSH TO BRING THEM BACK

In the late 1990s, Siletz tribal member David Hatch found a collection of old kelp maps and realized most of the lush underwater forests pictured on the maps were now gone.

Research led him to realize that the absence of sea otters, one of the top predators of tiny purple sea urchins, had allowed the urchins to feast on kelp and turn many kelp forests into lifeless zones.

Hatch, a city of Portland engineer, brought together an informal group of otter advocates under the umbrella of conservation nonprofit Ecotrust to help bring the mammals back to Oregon’s coast. He called it the Elakha Alliance.

“Elakha” is the word for sea otter in the Chinook trading language.

In 2018, after Hatch’s death, that group transformed into a nonprofit that has tirelessly worked on his vision.

The alliance of tribes, nonprofit leaders and conservation groups has done public outreach to build support for sea otters, sponsored economic and tourism-focused studies and conducted a complete scientific assessment and public policy analysis to determine the feasibility and impacts of restoring and protecting sea otters.

When Congress directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to look at the feasibility and cost of the animals’ reintroduction, the federal agency adopted the scientific evidence gathered by the alliance.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, just like the nonprofit, concluded that sea otter reintroduction would work in Oregon and Northern California from a biological, socioeconomic and legal aspect. It also found that it would lead to multiple benefits to the species and the nearshore marine ecosystem, including the recovery of kelp forests and seagrass, greater biological diversity and enhanced resistance to climate change.

The wildlife agency also acknowledged concerns over potential competition by sea otters with the shellfish industry – otters eat everything from sea urchins to crab to other shellfish – though its report concluded that “substantial widespread economic impacts from the reintroduction … are unlikely” and would largely depend on the sites chosen for releasing the animals.

Oregon’s shellfish industry has spoken out vehemently against bringing sea otters back to the state.

“Dungeness crab is Oregon’s most valuable single species commercial fishery, contributing over half a billion dollars to the state’s economy in just the past four seasons. The introduction of sea otters poses a direct threat to this crucial industry,” said Crystal Adams, the executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

Fishermen in Alaska, where sea otter numbers have grown exponentially, have already blamed the otters for reducing their harvests – a situation Adams fears could repeat in Oregon.

“See otters are voracious eaters,” she said. “Their diet includes Dungeness crab, which could lead to a substantial reduction in crab populations available for commercial and recreational harvesting.”

But the Elakha Alliance says its research indicates Oregon has never had more than 5,000 sea otters because the coasts of Oregon and Northern California are rough and exposed to severe storms, with a steep and narrow continental shelf and lacks the kind of inland passages, inlets and protected habitat area that have allowed otter populations to thrive in Alaska.

Given that sea otters typically have one pup a year, they are unlikely to proliferate here in greater numbers for many decades, Bacchieri said.

THE GRANT

The three-year planning effort will allow tribes and their partners to contract with scientists to run population models at various coastal sites to help inform site selection. Other scientists will do ecological site assessments to verify the availability of food for the otters, check on kelp status and other conditions.

The work will also include studies such as a Fisheries Economic Impact Assessment and engagement with the fishing community to allow them to weigh in about suitable areas.

Tribes also will collect cultural and traditional ecological knowledge about sea otters and they and the Elakha Alliance will prepare a public outreach effort, in conjunction with sea otter nonprofits.

In addition to the Siletz tribe and the Elakha Alliance, other project partners include Defenders of Wildlife, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Yurok Tribe and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, the latter two based in California. The Oregon Coast Aquarium, which is building a marine mammal rehabilitation facility, and the Oregon Zoo also are on board.

There are still many unknowns, including figuring out which sites are best – not just for the animals, but also for the coastal and fishing communities – where the donor animals would come from and how to best monitor them after their release.

“Uprooting an animal like that, even under the best conditions, It’s pretty traumatic,” Kentta said. “So getting them established is a bit of a challenge, but once they are established, then they should be able to take care of themselves as long as there’s no other threats.”

As of now, there’s no proposal to reintroduce sea otters.

Last week, Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Jodie Delavan told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she had no other updates. The next step, according to the agency’s website, is “to evaluate potential sea otter reintroduction scenarios with the help of expanded scientific modeling from the scientific community.”

Still, sea otter advocates hope for a decision within the next 10 years.

“This whole effort is a mission of hope,” Kentta said. “We’ve seen decline in near shore ecosystem health and there’s all sorts of side benefits to sea otter reintroduction and having healthy kelp forest habitat, not just for species, including baby salmon, but for the potential to contribute to lessening coastal erosion, increasing carbon capture and up the level of oxygen in the water.”

— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.

Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.