Otter Observations

I saw otters at Trinidad this evening! It's been exactly one year to the day since I last saw them.

All summer long, I have been receiving reports from reliable witnesses that there was an otter family in the bay again. Unfortunately, I no longer have reliable transportation, so I have been unable to go see them myself. Despite the fact that my car was acting up as bad as ever yesterday, though, I decided to tempt fate for one evening and make the drive up to Trinidad anyway.

It was just like the old days! The minute I stepped onto the pier, I saw a family of six in a tight formation swimming over from the headland. There was a mom and three babies, plus two yearling-sized 'satellite' individuals. It looked like a typical multi-year family grouping that I've been used to seeing here since the late 1980s.

Here's a video of the family in the tide pools east of the pier, taken earlier this evening.



Not having seen otters here for so long, the continuity of my observations has been completely disrupted, so I can only speculate who it was that I saw today. My best guess is that it was the mother I first saw in 2007, plus her three pups-of-the-year and the two yearlings born last year. All I can do is guess, though. I'm essentially just a clueless tourist here like anyone else now.

Whatever, it sure was great to see otters again! My life has hardly been worth living without them in it...

 

The dock area is closed now, meaning another summer season has come to an end. I only saw otters once, but that was enough to make worthwhile all my tribulations of the past 10 months. I'm content, because I know that, wherever the otter family is living now, they are alive, and they are safe, and those are the most important things to me. And Slick still lives, and through him, the old blood line will continue.

Slick also taught me two final lessons, one of which is that a male will sometimes leave his birth area to take up permanent residence somewhere else. I'd never had firm evidence for this before, as all the males born at Trinidad in the past remained there their whole life. But now I know that a male will disperse to another area to live in proximity to a female to whom he is bonded.

Slick's also shown me that an adult male can become a full-time cohabitating member of a family group of a mother and her young. I hadn't seen this since 1983, when I was first starting to watch the otters, but back then, I wasn't quite certain about what I was seeing. Granted, I only saw Slick and his family once, but I saw enough to know that this had been going on for quite a while. And taking up permanent residence with the neighboring family really was the only satisfactory explanation for why he had apparently vanished completely from Trinidad Bay.

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Finally, I wanted to share a picture taken during what were probably my final moments of watching otters at Trinidad, just after 9PM on August 19.



There are actually two otters on the rocks at right, but they're too indistinct to be recognizable. The picture captures a typical moment, though – me, the lone watcher, seeing things that no one else can see. I'm glad I wasn't really alone that particular night, though. My friend Dan took this picture. I was so glad he was there then. At least I got to share my Happy Ending with someone else who really knows what these animals mean to me...

 

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from someone who asked me some very interesting questions about the evolution of otters. This was a specialty of mine in graduate school, and this recent inquiry has resulted in me digging up some images of fossil "lutromorphs" – or otterlike animals – from an old research paper of mine. So I thought I'd share some of them with the readers of this blog.

This is Potamotherium, an "otter" from 30 million years ago. I put that in quotes because otters as we know them now didn't exist yet. Otters are members of the weasel ("mustelid") family of carnivores. Potamotherium, however, was an "arctoid" carnivore – a taxonomic group comprising what would become the bear family, the weasel family and the raccoon family millions of years later.




Despite being such a "primitive" carnivore, though, Potamotherium's skeleton (below) looks almost exactly like that of modern otters.




The otterlike body-shape ("lutromorphy") is a classic mammalian form. It's so well-suited to its environment that it's evoloved over and over again in many different groups of animals.

For example, this is the fossil "seal-otter" known as Semantor, from approximately 5-6 million years ago. Semantor is an example of a "morphological intermediate" between otterlike animals that lived on land and the fully-aquatic pinnipeds we know today.




And this fossil animal, Enaliarctos, was an otter-like bear which lived in the inland sea of California 22-24 million years ago.




Enaliarctos was a "hemicyonine ursid," which roughly translated means "half-doglike bear." Like I said, way back then, the carnivores were not as well-differentiated as they are now. Anyway, doing some reading on the web, I guess today Enaliarctos is considered to be the common ancestor of seals and sea lions. Back when I was in grad school, Enaliarctos was thought to be ancestral to sea lions only, but now there seems to be more evidence that it was the granddaddy to modern-day phocid seals, as well...

 

This is a photograph of a colored pencil drawing that used to hang in the main building of the "Otter Zentrum" in Hankensbüttel, Germany (Google Earth: 52 43'55.64 N, 10 37'11.69 E). I took the photo during my visit there for the V. International Otter Colloquium in September, 1989.



A rather attractive fellow, isn't he? I sure thought so. When I heard that the Otter Zentrum had been destroyed in an arson fire in December, 1993, the first thing I thought of was all the wonderful otter art there that must also have burned. So, the picture I took of this drawing is probably all that remains of it.

I wish the artist's name was legible. I also wish I knew the real story behind this artwork. I can't be certain, of course, but the "O.S" might stand for "Olympische Spiele;" German for "Olympic Games." Was this a concept drawing for a proposed Olympic mascot? Who knows?

 

Arriving at the pier last night with out-of-town company, I was surprised to find unequivocal sign right away that at least one otter had visited the dock that very day. There were two very fresh fish scraps – and only two – on top of one of the pontoon floats under the dock. Only an otter could have put them there, and not just any otter, but one that was familiar with the pier structure. I was very excited! One of the natives had obviously returned!

So for the first time this summer, I went into active otter-spotting mode. Scanning the headland, I noticed a new path in the brush at the main den site that was just as wide as an otter's body, and saw signs that a second den entrance had been used recently, too. Then, about twenty minutes later, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and to my amazed delight, I saw not one but five otters walking down the crag of the main den towards the water: three adult-sized individuals, and two pups-of-the-year. (It was the largest assemblage of otters I've seen here in six years.)

It was after sunset already, so I had to rely on behaviors alone to figure out who I was looking at. To make a long story short, after witnessing all the various interactions, I believe the group was comprised of Mother, Pup (now a yearling, and evidently a female – yay!), a new male and female pup, and Slick! (I'm now convinced more than ever that he is the father of all of the youngsters.) I don't know where they've been for the last 8-1/2 months, but obviously, they're all alive and well and doing fine!

With such a long absence, I know I still don't have a study anymore, but at least it has a happier ending now than it did before, and my otter-starved soul is whole once again. :-)

 

The die-off continues...

Two dead otters have been reported to me so far this summer. I didn't see either of them, but the witnesses are reliable. The first was in June on Trinidad State Beach. It was a pup of the year, found soon after death. Then, just this past week, the other was found at Sotsin Point, which is about a mile east and south of Trinidad Head. Judging by size, it appeared to be a yearling/subadult, and had been dead about a month.

I've been to the pier twice since my final session; on the 21st of June, and yesterday. There was no sign of otter activity anywhere, either on or under the docks. It's clear to me that none have visited the dock the entire season thus far. Then, when I was visually scanning the headland, I saw a familiar dark shape moving at Chirper's rubbing place. "An otter!," I thought. At first glance it sure looked and moved like one. When I got my binoculars out and looked at the dark shape, though, I saw what it actually was.

It was a vulture, eating carrion.

How symbolically appropriate...

 

Today marks the 25th anniversary of my first otter sighting at Trinidad Bay. It has also been six months since my last sighting. This, then, seems an appropriate time to officially call it quits. My final study session will be this evening.

I do not know if Slick, Mother and Pup are alive or dead. All I know is, they are no longer living here or even visiting here anymore, and I cannot study what I cannot see.

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When I first found these river otters – so apparently out-of-place in the ocean, yet just as apparently at-home there – I had only one thing in mind.

I wanted to know all about them. I wanted to know every detail of their extraordinary lives.

It took five of their generations, and half of my lifetime, but they finally answered every question I ever had.

They taught me my lessons.

Then they went away.

The teacher's left the classroom.

Now there's no reason to stay.

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First sighting: June 6, 1983
Last sighting: December 7, 2007
Last session: June 6, 2008

Visits to study area: 6,474
Recorded sessions: 6,149
Sessions with otter(s) sighted: 4,796
Percentage of sessions with otter(s) sighted: 78%
Otter-hours of behavior observed: >12,000
Consecutive days at study area: 721 (March 10, 2003 – February 27, 2005)

Known individuals in study: 89
Generations observed: 7
Lifespan range of otters observed: c.1970 – 2007
Generations studied formally: 5
Mothers observed: 8
Litters confirmed: 30
Pup births confirmed: 59
Pup gender confirmed: females, 21; males, 21
Died in first year: >35
Died as a yearling: 8
Survived to adulthood: females, 6; males, 9
Infanticides/abandonments: >11
Most pups: Old Mama, 24
Most litters: Little Mama, 9
Longest lifespans: female, Little Mama (13y,10m); male, Ninety (11y,10m)

Most beloved: Old Mama, Scarnose Little Pup & Little Mama – my miracle girls, and my greatest teachers. Their unseen guardian angel loved them more than words can express...

 

In 25 years, I've never seen an orca anywhere near Trinidad Bay, but quite obviously they're here now...

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_9343511

 

It has been almost 4 months since I last saw an otter here. For me to go that length of time without a sighting is completely without precedent. It's not simply me picking the wrong days for my sessions – no one else has reported seeing an otter in the bay during this whole time, either. The otters' den sites also show no signs of use.

Slick, in particular, is conspicuous by his absence. He was the last real resident otter at Trinidad Bay. For a while now, I've had to accept that if anything ever happened to him, that would probably be the end of it. (Mother and Pup were never more than visitors here, and I haven't seen either of them in almost half a year.) Now, I don't know if Slick's alive or dead, all I know is, he is not here, and hasn't been for some time.

So my worst fear has finally come to pass. There are no otters here anymore. Twenty-five years after I found them, the Trinidad otters are gone...

I saw sleep-piles in person a handful of times. The most memorable instance was when a group of 5 males fell asleep in a sloppy pile on one of the boats in the harbor. There were big swells that day, but despite all the rocking and rolling, they all just drifted off to sleep as it they were safe and secure on terra firma. Seeing how at home they appeared, I somehow I got the feeling this wasn't the first time this bunch had caught 40 winks on that boat...

The first beer I ever homebrewed – a stout, actually...




I think this was late 1989 or early 1990. It didn't really taste all that good. Just kept this one bottle for old times' sake – and the nice label design. :-)

These guys graced the front window of a bookstore in Trinidad back in 2003...

I think they're really gone this time.

No sightings for over two months. No sign anywhere that otters have even passed through the area.

I feel impossibly desolate...

My last sighting was 6 weeks ago. I don't know what's happened, all I know is, there are no otters here...

This was my Christmas card in 1982. Just as apropos today as it was 25 years ago...

Going through the 2007 video frame by frame, I found quite a few individual images that really stood out to me. In these two, Slick to my eye looks exactly like his mother in one frame, and milliseconds later, he looks like a clone of his other direct matrilineal forebear: Little Mama.

Slick looks like Scoots's reincarnation here:





Then, after turning his head ever-so-slightly, he's the spitting image of his grandmother:




( One more. )

I know that almost everyone reading this (excepting oliver_otter) probably can't see any difference between the top images, but trust me, the degree of Slick's resemblance to his maternal kin in these two frames is almost spooky. It's also kind of surprising to me, though, because in his younger years, I didn't think Slick had much of "the family resemblance." But now that his fur is taking on the "grizzled" appearance of age - especially in his face - he clearly looks like the rightful inheritor of his lineage.