What's happening in our Sea Otter exhibit?
The southern sea otters in our Sea Otters exhibit love to play with toys, lounge in ice buckets or just snooze. We feed ours four times a day, often putting the food in toys to stimulate the otters' natural behavior of pounding and working to get food out of shells.
Our aquarists also teach the otters behaviors, like holding a target with their paws or walking onto a scale. Training keeps our otters mentally and physically stimulated—it also makes working with the otters safer for us and less stressful for them.
Don't Miss
Discover Your Inner Otter
Each of our exhibit otters has a unique personality — just like us. Take this otter-ly amazing personality quiz and find out if you're most like Rosa, Abby, Selka, Kit or Ivy!
We’d Like a Side of Clams, Please
Our feeding sessions are more than just meal service. We purposely use tidbits of food as a training technique to reward positive behavior. Learn more by going on a virtual visit to our food room and watch how we prepare a sea otter spread.
Saving Sea Otters
The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Sea Otter Program has been studying the threatened southern sea otter since 1984 with the aim of understanding threats to the population and promoting its recovery. We rescue, treat and release injured otters; raise and release stranded pups through our surrogate program; seek homes for sea otters that can't return to the wild; and conduct scientific research.
View Our Sea Otters Curriculum
Our standards-based curriculum has been developed to provide educators with easy-to-use, Aquarium-centered science activities for the classroom.
