Aquariums Team Up to Save Stranded Sea Otter Pups

Sea Otter Pups Find Hope with Surrogate Mothers

Stranded sea otter pups along the California coast have a new chance at survival thanks to a unique partnership between the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. These institutions have embarked on a mission to pair orphaned pups with surrogate sea otter mothers, aiming to equip them with essential life skills for a successful return to their natural habitat.

The collaboration has already seen heartwarming success, with the first surrogate mother, Ellie, bonding with a pup yet to be named. Megan Smylie, the sea otter program manager at the Aquarium of the Pacific, emphasized the importance of this relationship. “That mom is going to teach them all of the behaviors that we cannot teach, being people,” she explained, highlighting the surrogate’s role in grooming, foraging, and prey manipulation.

With California sea otters listed as a protected species, their conservation is critical not only for their own survival but also for maintaining the balance of California’s coastal ecosystems. Brett Long, a senior director at the Aquarium of the Pacific, noted that sea otters play a vital role in controlling herbivore populations like sea urchins, which in turn helps preserve kelp forests and eelgrass beds—key players in biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

The adorable yet territorial nature of sea otters comes with a hefty price tag. Their diet consists of 25 percent of their body weight in high-quality seafood daily. For a single 45-pound otter, this translates to an annual feeding cost of $40,000 for the aquarium, necessitating ongoing fundraising efforts.

So far, eight stranded pups have been rescued through this initiative. The hope is that more organizations will join in to bolster wild populations and safeguard the coastal ecosystem. Long reflected on the profound impact of their work: “This is a bigger purpose. This is a higher challenge. So we invest and we invest a lot but we’ve all now learned and appreciate, boy, you see that juvenile otter survive out in the wild. That feels incredible.”