Dave Green, a good friend from Victoria (and a guy who taught me whitewater kayaking), has some really great news:
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Captain Cook took a few sea otter skins in trade from the Nootka on the west coast of Vancouver Island in the 1780s and sold them in China for a huge profit. His journal description of this transaction lead to a ‘gold rush’.
The sea otter fur trade became an industry that flourished for a hundred years, until all the sea otter pelts had been delivered to China and the sea otters in British Columbia were extinct. The Russians, in a sweep down from Alaska, appear to have mopped up the last of the animals in the 1890s.
Sea otters were gone from our shores, and the ecosystem of the coast changed. Sea urchins multiplied. Kelp beds disappeared.
Sea otters remained extinct for about 100 years until a few pairs were introduced in the Bunsby Islands south of Brooks Peninsula in the 1970s. On the west coast of the island the animals gradually recovered, and they are now often seen on whale watching tours out of Tofino.
But yesterday, the first sea otter in well over a hundred years appeared in Georgia Strait on the east coast of Vancouver Island. He was drifting past our house on his back, munching a crab, and looking like nothing had happened.
He came ashore to greet his photographer. He swam over to check out my kayak and hang onto its bow loop. He cheerfully demonstrated how he hunts and dines, manoeuvres and preens.
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Sea otters are smart, social and curious. They are cuter than koala bears. And they are back!
Thank you, Fisheries and Oceans scientists, for a miracle of animal population recovery. This time, let’s just love them and not skin them.
Excuse my ignorance, but river otters are pervasive along the gulf islands. How do you tell between a river otter and a sea otter? Is this a river otter?
http://riverotters.tribe.net/thread/cb6affb4-3ab6-4349-9525-45215a57bc24