Sea Otter Research

State-of-the-art medical technologies are essential for diagnosing and treating sick and injured sea otters.

Meet a Volunteer
Tracker

Counting Wild Otters

Each spring and fall, our volunteer trackers and staff join with people from other conservation and government groups to try to count every pup and adult in the southern sea otter population. In order to promote the otters' recovery, we must know whether the numbers are growing, shrinking or remaining steady.

Our Sea Otter Research and Conservation program scientists engage in cooperative research with many other groups and institutions working to understand and conserve the southern sea otter. Our research gives us information that we use to promote the health and safety of the present otter population. We use the new technologies we develop with our partners to support the recovery of the sea otter population along our coast.

We've learned a great deal about otter nutrition, metabolism, growth and development from the otters in our rehabilitation program. By taking blood samples from wild otters, we can track the health of that population. We're also learning to recognize and treat parasites and diseases that attack wild otters. We work with the U.S. Geological Survey to recover dead otters from the beaches. By determining the causes of otter deaths, we learn about the dangers that threaten the animals in the wild.

In order to track the movement, behavior and survival of otters in the wild, especially rehabilitated animals, we need to be able to locate and identify them. Each otter released from the aquarium's rehabilitation program has a radio transmitter surgically implanted in its abdomen. These transmitters produce a particular frequency that allows our trackers to locate and identify each otter. This is especially important when an otter is first released to the wild, as trackers need to follow its progress to make sure it's finding adequate food and maintaining its health. We also inject a tiny transponder chip under the skin in the groin area of each otter, which produces a distinct code when activated by a scanner.

Inspiring conservation of the oceans