Meet The Cutest Marine Mammals; Sea Otter!

Photo credit to Padraig Duignan

Hi, friends! Today, let’s get to know one of the cutest sea animals you will ever see; Sea Otter! Otters are semi-aquatic animals that you may often see on social media; these are usually river otters. So, what’s special about sea otters? Let’s find out and learn together!

Appearance

Sea Otter, or the scientific name is Enhydra lutris, is a member of the weasel family. Although it is relatively large for a weasel, the sea otter tends to be small in size compared to other marine animals.

This marine mammal can grow to be between 1.2 and 1.4 meters long and weigh up to 45 kilograms — that’s a pretty impressive size for an otter! If you compare it to a human, an adult otter can be as tall as a 6-year-old child — how cool is that?

Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters do not have a thick layer of blubber to protect them from the cold seawater of the North Pacific Ocean. Instead, they have extremely thick fur — the thickest of any animal — to keep their bodies warm. Their fur usually have brown, black, and cream color.

Their Diet

Sea otters are carnivorous animals that eat the meat they find in their marine habitat. Southern sea otters eat invertebrates such as crabs, snails, sea urchins, clams, abalones, and green mussels — for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and plenty of snacks in between meals! Northern sea otters are also known to eat fish.

Since clams are usually hard to open, sea otters have a clever way of cracking them open and eating them. Sea otters dive to find a rock, then return to the surface and smash the clam against the rock they’ve found. It’s also not uncommon — especially in zoos — for otters to smash their clams directly against a hard surface there.

Their Behavior

Photo credit to Brian Simuro

Sea otters have a unique habit that sets them apart from other marine animals: they sleep while floating in the ocean. Typically, they sleep while floating in the open sea, holding hands with one another, or they may float among seaweed beds — or giant kelp — where they wrap themselves around the plants to keep from being swept away by the choppy waves.

Habitat and Population

In the past, sea otters could be found from Mexico to Alaska, and even as far as Japan. At that time, the sea otter population numbered as many as 150,000 to 300,000 individuals. However, because of the beauty of their fur, they were hunted and killed by humans and sold as a highly prized commodity at the time, leaving the sea otter population on the brink of extinction.

Today, California’s sea otter population, numbering about 3,000, is spread from Half Moon Bay to Point Conception. A much larger sea otter population exists in Alaska, and some are still found in Russia. Now that their population status has been upgraded to Endangered, experts and animal lovers are working to restore the sea otter population through conservation efforts and by continuing to monitor their habitat, which is polluted by trash and oil spills in the ocean.

Sea otters play a vital role in our marine ecosystem; thanks to them, sea urchin populations remain stable and the kelp ecosystem stays in balance. Let’s protect our marine ecosystem by not littering in rivers!