Sea Otters Revisited

June-July 2005

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Lyn Hancock

"Sea otters to starboard,” I shouted exultantly. My eight shipmates grabbed their cameras and binoculars, squeezing onto the foredeck of Voyager, our chartered 32-foot aluminum water taxi.

Skipper Leo Jack grinned broadly as he pointed the bow of his boat towards a glistening forest of kelp lying off the verdant shore of Vancouver Island just five minutes north of Kyuquot. Blending into the kelp was a ‘raft’ of some 70 to 80 sea otters, the goal of our expedition. The sun glinted on their shiny heads and framed the sea around them in sparkling diamonds. I was in heaven.

They bobbed up and down in the slight swell, some stretching their heads upwards in spy-hopping mode, others lying on their backs holding their stubby forepaws stiff and upright like mittens. With fore and hind limbs protruding from the water, they looked like upside down coffee tables. From a distance, their straw-colored heads resembled balls of kelp, but as we got closer, there was no mistaking their irresistible, toy-like faces. They looked almost artificial, as if someone had painted on their pudgy bewhiskered cheeks, beady black eyes, triangular nose patches, and pert, prissy mouths.

Everybody is charmed by the baby face of a sea otter—except perhaps an abalone, sea urchin, crab fisherman, or in the past, a hunter lusting after a valuable pelt. It was human greed for the fabulous fur of the sea otter that determined the course of history along the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. In the ruthless pursuit of this one animal, Russia colonized Alaska, Great Britain claimed the west coast of Canada, and British Columbia was born.

In 170 years of unregulated mass hunting, the sea otter became commercially extinct. In BC, Washington and Oregon, extermination was complete, but in the most inaccessible storm-lashed reefs of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands (and the rugged surf-swept coast of central California), a few survived. During the 1950s and 1960s, a total of 412 animals were successfully transplanted to southeast Alaska from the Aleutian Islands, and it was from this population that Alaska agreed to allow British Columbia to transplant sea otters to a suitable area off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

My own interest in sea otters goes back a long way. In 1967, my husband accompanied Karl Kenyon of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Don Blood of the BC Fish and Wildlife Branch on a survey to choose the best location for the transplant. The Bunsby Islands in Checleset Bay, a few hours paddle north of Kyuquot, were selected because of their shallow waters which harbored an abundant supply of choice invertebrates, extensive kelp beds, little development or pollution.

However, it would take two years of political intrigue, government bureaucracy and a change in plan (from collecting otters near Anchorage to collecting them from Amchitka Island prior to its nuclear blast) before otters reached the Bunsbys. (See my book There’s a Raccoon in my Parka.)

Finally, in 1969, Alaska flew 29 sea otters to British Columbia from the blast site but very few were ever seen again. In 1970, Alaska promised additional otters from Prince William Sound, and this time I was lucky to be aboard the Federal Fisheries research vessel, the G.B.Reed, which conducted the transplant.

I joined the Reed in Prince William Sound and watched while 45 sea otters were captured in nets and placed in holding tanks aboard ship. Unfortunately, due to a storm in the Gulf of Alaska and inadequate experience in keeping sea otters alive in captivity, only 19 animals survived to be released in the Bunsbys.

In 1972, 46 more Alaskan sea otters were flown to the Bunsbys and released with only one casualty. Now, the original otters from these three transplants have increased their numbers to something between 2,500 and 5,000, expanding their range as far north as the Queen Charlotte Islands and as far south as Barkley Sound.

So I was thrilled to be aboard the Voyager bound for the Bunsbys where I had watched the 1970 release. But not everyone shares my affection for sea otters. Fishermen complain that they have cleaned out all the invertebrates and some locals have reportedly taken to shooting them.

Like other predators, sea otters affect many layers of the ecosystem they inhabit. Sea otters prey on sea urchins, which in turn consume kelp, which in turn provides habitat for near-shore species. Some researchers believe that when sea otters were extirpated, the urchins devoured vast native kelp forests, and that sea otters could help return marine ecosystems to a more complete state. (See Northwest Environment Watch’s April 2005 Cascadia Scorecard, www.northwestwatch.org/ scorecard/)

The base camp chosen for our trip by our leader, Joan, was idyllic, situated on the northeast end of Gay Passage in Big Bunsby Provincial Marine Park.

The hot, tropic-like sun blasting down from the cloudless sky lulled us into believing that this impeccable weather would last forever. But Joan warned us that gale-force winds had abruptly aborted her trip with the Nanaimo Paddlers the year before and could do so again. Except for pessimistic but practical Ray and Ian who dragged their gear through head-high thimbleberry bushes to set up their tent in the forest behind, we sun-loving optimists chose campsites in the open along the crescent beach of pure white sand where Leo had unloaded us. Joe and Sally set up a solar shower for us all.

Within minutes, driftwood was transformed into furniture and uprooted logs into pantries and closets. Veteran campers Joan, Joe and Sally prepared a communal kitchen between a massive, conveniently flat-topped log and an abundant back wall of salal bushes. We picked big, juicy salal berries and stirred them on the stove for dessert. Sharon had started a tradition of adding brandy to our berries and now no Nanaimo Paddlers trip is complete without Fruit Flambé on the menu.

We spent the rest of the day in swimsuits exploring the picturesque eastern end of our island at low tide. We collected shells, identified many colorful wildflowers— Indian paint brush, blue harebells, yellow asters and white false lily of the valley. We snorkeled, paddled logs and bathed in incredible emerald tidal pools as if we were kids again. Everywhere we looked, the sculptured rocks and logs onshore and the medley of islets offshore begged to be painted or photographed.

“Time for a paddle,” called Joan the next day, when high tide made it convenient to launch the kayaks. We followed our leader across Gay Passage to Upsowis Point and circled the innermost of the three main Bunsby Islands in a counter-clockwise direction. Homeward bound, we poked into all the crevices of a bay that almost bisected the island. While Gloria and I stopped by some geoduck divers to learn the best way to prepare these mammoth clams for dinner, our paddlemates watched as a black bear ate berries behind a log on the shoreline and played peekaboo with them, alternately lifting its head to look, then ducking down out of sight.

But the climax came as we paddled into the sunset on the western side of our campsite island and saw a sea otter lying on his back using his chest for a dining table and noisily jawing down his supper. The clack of jaws opening and closing around his prey was easily audible as we paddled silently by. That night, Gloria and I enjoyed such a contented sleep that we missed an earthquake that wakened everyone else.

After the earthquake came the rain and then a 40 mph gale which flattened tents and sent most of us into the forest to beg space from Ray and Ian who were too polite to say “I told you so”. Our plan for this day had been to paddle across open water to Battle Bay on Vancouver Island to replenish our water supply. I hoped to see if anything was left of an old longhouse and two totem poles, one with a sea otter carved on the top, which had intrigued me 35 years earlier. Instead, we caught drips and collected water that puddled along the edges of the tarps.

Joan had the right attitude. “I love this weather. The windier, the shittier, the better. From glory to gales, this IS the Bunsbys.”

I confess I was glad when Paradise returned the next day. Our full day’s paddle around the middle island of the Bunsbys was sufficient compensation for the storm. We lunched at a lagoon where the two halves of the island were cinched at its waist, then paddled to the head of a narrow inlet to muse on the history of an ancient stone fish trap.

The following day was even better. Heading south and west to Chekaklis, the outermost of the three main Bunsby Islands and a First Nations Reserve, we arrived at a channel between two sets of low, rocky islets at the same time as a raft of sea otters. Joan waited while I snapped off a few quick pictures as they bobbed and rolled in the surf, then she motioned us to go left in a big circle and leave the passage to the otters. They seemed to prefer the rugged windswept reefs of the outer islands to more protected inner waters.

Before we reached Chekaklis Island, we stopped to lunch on an unnamed island which could have been called Flower for its meadows of nodding onion, yarrow, harebells, pinks and dead nettles. And there were flowers in the sea as well—huge sun stars so clear and colorful in the calm shallow water, they appeared like paintings under glass. Some of us dozed in the warm sun and wished we were camped here, but Joan reminded us that we would have had little protection against gales from the west if the weather changed again.

There was a better campsite island a short paddle west of an unnamed island across the sun star-studded lagoon. The only other paddlers in the Bunsbys were camped there. We had met them on our first night camped in Fair Harbour while waiting for Leo. This spot was not quite as protected or as picturesque as our site in Gay Passage, but it was similar, having two beaches joined by a trail through the forest, handy in bad weather.

Next morning, our last day on the Bunsbys, we planned to be up at dawn to try again for Battle Bay if the forecast allowed. But the weather radio promised gale force winds in the afternoon, so instead, we hung out among the reefs of the nearest outer islands. The many rocky islets, swirling waters, thick coils of kelp and curling surf signaled food and shelter in abundance.

Eager to enter the serene center of this wild aquarium, Gloria and I braved the churning waters between the channels that led to it and were the first to see a mother and pup, two heads rolling together, almost indistinguishable in the usual embrace. With Gloria stabilizing the kayak, I snapped off two shots and hoped the camera saw more than a blur.

On the outermost islet was a stretch of fine white sand, the very beach where I had spent my last day of the Bunsby Islands transplant years ago, before continuing down the coast to Victoria. I never saw any other sea otters on that journey and many of us wondered if we ever would.

Thirty-five years have passed since then and there are now thousands of sea otters living in some of their traditional haunts along the BC coast. I know that when I explore the west coast of Vancouver Island by kayak I have a good chance of seeing one. Leo and other native friends of mine tell me that people will soon be making rugs of them again, but I hope not. I would gladly give up some seafood to watch the endearing antics of sea otters.

© Text and photos by Lyn Hancock, an author living in Lantzville, BC.

Editor’s note: Sea otters were relocated from Alaska to BC prior to the Cannikin nuclear test on Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimated that 300-800 of the remaining sea otters were killed from the blast. Their skulls were fractured by the force of the blast, driving their eyeballs through the bone behind their sockets. Some animals suffered ruptured lungs. For more information, see, Nuclear Flashback: Report of a Greenpeace Scientific Expedition to Amchitka Island, Alaska—Site of the Largest Underground Nuclear Test in US History.