Fotos

Sea Otters eat, sleep, mates, and even gives birth at sea, and can remain submerged for four to five minutes. The animal was not seen in California for many years, they were so heavily hunted that by 1911, it had nearly become extinct. But in the spring of 1938, almost 20 years after an international treaty forbade its massacre a herd appeared in the sea south of Carmel. Today the population there is perhaps 2,000.

On my two day excursion along the California Coast, I saw perhaps 20 individuals, though often they were just too far away to photograph. I ran into this one in Morro Bay, busily diving and bringing up food and then hungrily consuming it’s prize. I was unable to detect what it was eating, but apparently it was soft enough that no rock was required for cracking it’s shell, as Sea Otters are noted for doing.