The Return of the Sea Otter

Watch the water inside Morro Bay long enough and you will likely see one, floating on its back, a stone balanced on its belly, cracking open a clam. This is the southern sea otter, and its presence here is close to a miracle. During the fur trade, from the seventeen forties to the early nineteen hundreds, more than a million sea otters were killed along the Pacific, and the southern sea otter was believed to be extinct.

Then in nineteen thirty eight, a small surviving colony of about fifty otters was found clinging on near Bixby Creek on the Big Sur coast. From that tiny remnant the population slowly rebuilt, and today it numbers around three thousand animals between Half Moon Bay and Point Conception. Morro Bay is one of the few California estuaries where sea otters regularly live, along with Elkhorn Slough far to the north.

The federally protected otters here are more than charming. As they devour crabs and urchins, they help keep the estuary in balance, and their return is a sign that the bay is healthy. Bring binoculars, scan the calm water near the Embarcadero, and you may witness a species that came back from the edge of nothing.