Eight river otters (2 moms with 6 pups) have been in our ponds for the last couple of days hunting and eating hundreds of koi (carp). When they came out of the pond for a rest, I was able to sneak up close enough to photograph them without disturbing them. I had to shoot through the branches of a fir tree and could not move more than a few inches in any direction without them seeing me. All handheld shots using silent shutter.
When on land, they just love to pile on top of each other to play or rest. A lot of nuzzling goes on, where one will nuzzle the back of the neck of the other and vice-versa.
Found in both saltwater and freshwater, a river otter lounges around riverbanks and swims with its belly down, keeping the majority of its body submerged below the water. Sea otters, conversely, are found only in salt water and rarely go on land. Sea otters have the habit of floating on their backs, even while they’re eating, and have been known to hold hands with each other while sleeping so they don’t drift apart.
Sea otters use their two webbed hind feet and tail to propel them through the water, the four webbed feet of river otters are what enable them to swim efficiently. River otters can dive to around 60 feet deep, whereas sea otters can dive to several hundred feet to forage for food.
River otters keep their young safe by their side and in dens that they build on riverbanks, while sea otter moms typically keep their pups nestled on their stomachs as they float until they are old enough to swim on their own.
The sea otter is a success story in progress on Vancouver Island. Totally extirpated through hunting by the early 1900s, a reintroduction of 89 individuals in 1969 has now grown to an estimated 3,000 individuals living from Cape Scott to Barkley Sound on the west coast of the island. They are the largest member of the weasel family (Mustelidae), but one of the smallest marine mammals, and they rely on their incredibly dense fur coat to trap air as insulation.
The sea otter is distributed exclusively on the west coast of the island, ranging from Cape Scott in the north, to Barkley Sound in the south (though southward expansion is likely occurring). The restricted range is a result of the single introduction back onto Vancouver Island. In 1969, eighty-nine individuals from Alaska were released into the Bunsby Island Group about 25 km north of Kyuquot Sound, and they have been colonizing up and down the coast since. It is estimated that over 3,000 individuals now exist on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The only otters on the east coast of Vancouver Island are river otters.
The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska immediately killed over 1,000 sea otters, and removed hundreds of kilometers of habitat from their potential range.
Dec 16, 2019 at 03:02 PM
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