Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a sea otter stole a surfboard in the waters off Santa Cruz. It happened on Wednesday, when calls for a water rescue came in for the area of 550 West Cliff Drive.Santa Cruz firefighters told KCRA 3’s partners at KSBW 8 that a sea otter took a woman’s surfboard around 5:07 p.m. and may have nipped at her, but did not break the skin. Firefighters pulled her to shore.They said she was uninjured, and they later recovered her board from the otter. She did not have to be transported to the hospital.The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will be notified.This comes two years after Otter 841 captured national attention for stealing surfboards, inspiring merchandise—and even an ice cream flavor—named after her.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a sea otter stole a surfboard in the waters off Santa Cruz.
It happened on Wednesday, when calls for a water rescue came in for the area of 550 West Cliff Drive.
Mark Woodward / @Native Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz firefighters told KCRA 3’s partners at KSBW 8 that a sea otter took a woman’s surfboard around 5:07 p.m. and may have nipped at her, but did not break the skin. Firefighters pulled her to shore.
They said she was uninjured, and they later recovered her board from the otter. She did not have to be transported to the hospital.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will be notified.
This comes two years after Otter 841 captured national attention for stealing surfboards, inspiring merchandise—and even an ice cream flavor—named after her.
Sea otters are terminally cute critters and a delight to view rolling and diving in the kelp canopy of Monterey Bay, where some 3,000 endangered southern otters play an essential role in maintaining the marine kelp forest. But to crabs, clams, abalone, urchins and some fishermen, sea otters are voracious marine weasels that can eat 25% of their body weight a day — a perceived threat to life and livelihood.
That’s why some lively debates were launched at 16 open houses put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year to get public input on, as the invitation put it, the “potential reintroduction of sea otters to their historic range,” including Oregon and Northern California, a decision that is expected to be made this year.
In 2020, the service was directed by Congress to study the feasibility and cost of otter repopulation in part because of fear that an oil spill or other incident could wipe out the group concentrated around Monterey Bay. In September 2023, U.S. Fish and Wildlife rejected a fishing industry petition to remove otters’ threatened status under the Endangered Species Act because the California population has failed to grow significantly in recent decades.
There was an added incentive to keep the protection in place: the ongoing marine havoc linked to climate change. An algal bloom off the Central California coast killed hundreds of sea lions and dolphins last summer, multiple “red tides” have invaded San Francisco Bay and nearly 95% of Northern California’s kelp forest has been decimated by small purple sea urchins whose primary predator (with the sea otter out of the picture) — the sunflower sea star, or starfish — has largely died off from a wasting disease caused or exacerbated by warming ocean temperatures.
Once upon a time, vast rafts of hundreds of thousands of sea otters filled the coastal waters of the north Pacific Rim, from Baja to Japan, until they were driven to near extinction by Captain Cook and other 18th and 19th century British, Russian and American fur-trade hunters, who killed “sea beavers” to supply the Chinese imperial court with luxurious otter fur. Remnant populations were protected starting in 1911. In California in the early 1960s, survivors from around Big Sur recolonized Monterey Bay, feasting on urchins that eat kelp and revitalizing the kelp forest. A small group has even migrated south close to Santa Barbara.
Now environmentalists in Oregon and California, and several Indigenous groups, including the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians in Sonoma County, are mobilizing in support of an attempt to restore otters where they’ve long been absent, including San Francisco Bay. Fishermen are not so sanguine.
At the Bodega Bay open house, an abalone diver, Doug Jung, summarized fishermen’s worries succinctly: Wouldn’t reintroduced otters “strip mine the ocean”?
Dick Ogg, a longtime fisherman, was more specific. “The potential for impact,” he said, “can’t be quantified. If they eat the juvenile crab, that could be a big deal. Dungeness crab is our No. 1 fishery.”
There was no California salmon season in 2023 because of the long drought that preceded last winter’s torrential rains, and the 2024 season is still in question. As for recreational abalone diving on the North Coast, it’s been shut down since the kelp forest collapsed (commercial abalone diving was banned long ago). Things are precarious all around for West Coast commercial fishermen, who worry about maintaining their working waterfronts.
“I still think nature will do its own work,” Ogg told the Fish and Wildlife representatives in Bodega Bay. “I wouldn’t be bothered if [otters] recolonized on their own.”
But natural repopulation from the Golden Gate north isn’t likely. With the decline of protective coastal kelp and a now-healthy population of white sharks in the region’s waters, migrating otters stand a good chance of becoming great white snack food. But with human assistance, the reintroduction of otters could bypass the gauntlet.
If the effort succeeded, the impact on fishing might not be what is feared.
A 2020 study in the journal Science found that Canada’s reintroduction of sea otters in British Columbia not only generated $42 million from otter-loving tourists but also added $9 million to the commercial fishery thanks to its restoration of kelp habitat for lingcod and other species. Alaska, where released sea otters helped repopulate the coastal waters in the 1960s, now has both the largest number of otters and the most productive commercial fishery in the U.S.
“The sea otter could very well be the salvation for … catching fish in the years ahead if we can rebuild and repair a healthy ecosystem,” suggests Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), whose congressional district includes the entire coast north of San Francisco.
In Oregon and Northern California, there is hope that the cascading imbalances human have caused — exterminated otters, sick sea stars, disappearing abalone — can begin to be set straight, and that the kelp forest habitat, rich in marine life and a buffer against torrential storms, can recover.
And yes, we need to restore many more creatures in many more habitats and ecosystems. Maybe an adorable marine weasel can motivate that, too.
David Helvarg is executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group, and co-host of “Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast.”
Sea otter 841 — the surfboard biting stealing mammal who became a national sensation this summer — has given birth to fluffy baby pup.
On Wednesday afternoon, she was seen far off the Santa Cruz coast, rolling and spinning in the kelp and waves with a little otter pup on her belly.
Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
Mark Woodward, her No. 1 fan and most dedicated chronicler, said he spotted the pup for the first time Tuesday afternoon.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I think I let out a yelp when I saw it.”
Sea otter 841 chews on a surfboard after chasing off its owner in July in Santa Cruz.
(Mark Woodward)
Woodward, a social media influencer who goes by the tag @NativeSantaCruz on Twitter, Instagram and Threads, said that as recently as Friday, 841 had been been swimming, lolling and feeding solo.
The pup’s birth, which has yet to be officially confirmed by state and federal wildlife authorities, may explain 841’s unusually aggressive behavior toward multiple surfers — at least one whom abandoned their board and saw it carted off by the slick-haired cousin of the skunk and weasel. The gestational period for otters is roughly six months, and during this period, hormonal changes can cause the animal to become aggressive, experts say.
Emerson Brown, a spokesman for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said he and the “aquarium team” could not comment on the situation.
He said they’d “seen tweets, like everyone, but can’t confirm anything based on those images. We are waiting on confirmation from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.”
A spokeswoman for the federal agency said they were deploying someone to the area Thursday to confirm existence of the pup.
“While wildlife biologists suspected sea otter 841 may [have been] pregnant earlier this year, they were unable to verify the pregnancy without capturing the sea otter to perform a full health evaluation,” said Ashley McConnell, Communications Team Leader in the Ventura Fish and Wildlife Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Hormonal surges related to pregnancy have been known to cause aggressive behavior in female southern sea otters. … There are currently no plans to attempt capture.”
She’d given birth twice before. Her first pup survived; the second, born this spring, did not.
Gena Bentall, director and Senior Scientist with Sea Otter Savvy — a local research and environmental organization — said she and her organization were “not participating in or supporting any media publicity around 841. We do not feel it is in her best interest.”
Spectators flocked to the Santa Cruz coastline in the summer to catch a glimpse of sea otter 841. The creature had been unusually aggressive toward surfers and even stole a board from one.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
Woodward wasn’t surprised by Bentall’s response. After the media blitz this summer, he said, he saw several boaters and kayakers harrassing the otter, getting too close and potentially stressing her out and threatening her safety.
“People need to know they should give her space,” Woodward said, citing federal regulations that require boats to keep a distance of 60 feet.
“To help give sea otters and their pups the best chance at survival in the wild, it’s important for members of the public to give them and their pups space, especially when recreating on the water,” said McConnell, noting that sea otters are protected by the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and California state law.
She said a violation of these laws could result in penalties, including fines up to $100,000 and potential jail time of up to one year.
News of the pup — which was posted on the site formerly known as Twitter, by Woodward and Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University — was greeted with amazement by many.
Zach Friend, a Santa Cruz County supervisor, said: “It’s beautiful to see the expansion of Team Otter. Hopefully she will be given the space she deserves to raise our newest, and already famous, Santa Cruz County resident.”
However, Joon Lee, an Apple software engineer from San Jose — whose board was attacked by 841 in July — said that while the news was “amazing” he’d still want to make sure that she had stopped “attacking or getting on top of surfboards before I go out to the water.”
Last summer, after he’d been aggressively attacked, he developed a slight case of lutraphobia — a fear of otters — which squelched his desire to surf.
A sign warns beachgoers that an aggressive sea otter is “in the area,” in July.
(Mark Woodward)
Woodward said he’s excited to watch 841 raise the little pup; since first spotting her in June, he’s become a local expert on sea otter behavior and biology — noting that sea otter moms have to leave their pups on the ocean’s surface when they dive to the bottom for shellfish and other meals.
“Feeding and caring for a pup requires significant energy reserves,” said Fish and Wildlife’s McConnell.
She said that unlike whales and seals, which have a thick layer of blubber, sea otters rely on their thick fur coat and super-high metabolic rate to stay warm. The average adult sea otter has to actively forage and eat 20 to 30 percent of its body mass in food each day just to meet its energy requirements.
“That’s why it’s incredibly important for sea otters to conserve their energy, and why they are often seen resting on their backs on the water’s surface when they are not foraging — their survival, and the survival of their pups, depends on it,” she said.
Newsletter
Toward a more sustainable California
Get Boiling Point, our newsletter exploring climate change, energy and the environment, and become part of the conversation — and the solution.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
