The 5th Annual CA Coastal Wildlife Disturbance Symposium was held at the William Penn Mott Jr. Training Center and Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds A Growing Movement for Wildlife

On November 4, 2019, nestled in a grove of Monterey pines overlooking Asilomar State Beach, a record crowd convened with the common goal of protecting the wildlife of the California coast and beyond. Nearly eighty participants at the 5^th Annual California Coastal Wildlife Disturbance Symposium (our highest attendance yet) came to hear presentations from fifteen speakers describing wildlife disturbance issues and ideas for solutions. They came from as far away as Washington D.C. to share their knowledge and experience. They came to meet others from government agencies, non-profit organizations, and local businesses to find common ground, common goals and ways to work together to foster awareness and stewardship.

From Trinidad to La Jolla

Claire Nasr presents the results of her master's thesis study predicting disturbance risk During this day-long event, presenters brought news from the coastline of California — from the northern town of Trinidad south to the upscale community of La Jolla. Even wildlife at the more remote places along our coast are not immune to the impacts of human disturbance. The Trinidad Coastal Land Trust shared about their community science program organized to monitor disturbance along their rugged coast, and attendees were given a summary by a recent graduate of Humboldt State University of her statistical assessment of disturbance risk to select marine species. Speakers from Southern California described the decades-long battle for beach access at the notorious Children’s Pool in La Jolla and a code of ethics for professional wildlife photographers. We heard about the challenge of balancing the needs of humans and elephant seals at the beaches of Pt. Reyes National Seashore and San Simeon, and the clamor of human-generated sound navigated by the marine species of Monterey Bay. 

What do Sarah Codde from Pt. Reyes National Seashore showcases new infographics to reduce human conflict with elephant sealsMonterey Bay stakeholders see as the most pressing conservation challenge when cohabiting with urban sea otters How do Marine Protected Areas protect seabirds from disturbance? Symposium attendees learned the answers to these questions and more! Updates on the progress of ongoing wildlife disturbance-related projects are always on the agenda, like the Respect Wildlife Campaign (rooted in our first symposium), the certification program, Community Active Wildlife Stewards (CAWS), and a new Monterey Bay Whale Watching collaborative, so attendees can follow along as these projects grow and evolve.

Each year, participants contribute outreach materials to our “Outreach Gallery”, a forum for sharing what has been done, and getting feedback on new ideas. Our collection is growing and this year we encircled our room with colorful and creative handouts, stickers, banners, and flyers. The gallery also supplemented spoken presentations with several posters on wildlife disturbance related topics.

The wildlife law enforcement panel takes questions from attendees as our sea otter napsIn an unprecedented special session, we gathered a panel of experts in wildlife law enforcement to review and discuss the potential and limitations of state and federal law enforcement to curb wildlife disturbance. The audience was able to hear from state and federal wildlife law enforcement staff and courtroom prosecutors from the US Department of Justice Wildlife Crimes Section and the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office and participate in a Q & A session with a panel of six experts. With considerable debate and confusion about the scope and effectiveness of law enforcement as a tool to reduce human disturbance to wildlife, this session was especially eye-opening and informative. Look for a future blog with a more detailed summary this special program.

Gaining Momentum

Building on a seabird-focused Wildlife Disturbance Symposium organized by Seabird Protection Network in 2013, Sea Otter Savvy has partnered with the Seabird Protection Network and California State Parks to organize this wildlife disturbance symposium since 2015. Our goal from the start has been focused on maximizing the effectiveness of diverse efforts to mitigate human-caused disturbance to coastal wildlife by fostering agreement upon common strategies and messaging, creating a forum for the sharing of new ideas, and supporting collaboration.  After a full day or talks and activities, attendees were invigorated and inspired to return home with new solutions and connections. With human population steadily on the rise, our wildlife need champions more than ever. It is clear from the growing interest and participation in this symposium that the momentum of this movement to reduce human-caused wildlife disturbance is growing. Let’s keep the wave of awareness moving forward and work together to create a more peaceful world for our wild neighbors.

Alicia Amerson (Projects for Wildlife Podcast, The Photologists), long time symposium attendee and member of the Respect Wildlife Campaign team, shares her list of ten takeaway messages from the day:

1. Let folks know if signage is not working in your area - then you can collaborate to make new signs to help reduce disturbance.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2. Report wildlife infractions to NOAA, USFWS, and CalTIP.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
3. Take video of infractions, get their license plate or boat number, and send in.⠀Evidence is the only road to prosecuting violations! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
4. Don't tell the person who is committing the infraction that you are calling them in. Let the professionals deal with them.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
5. The "Sometimes the best relationship is a long-distance relationship" signage campaign by National Parks Service is effective.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
6. Partner and grow collaborations to protect wildlife from human disturbance in your local area.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
7. Get community science programs up and running, or join an existing program in your area.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
8. When asked what you are studying or observing - tell the person "Oh, I am just counting the number of times the animal bites a person who gets to close"⠀(a tactic used by one of the presenters!)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
9. Know who you are in the project — are you the person who looks at the issue with the glass half full or half empty!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
10. It takes all of us and our unique skills to protect wildlife!⠀⠀

Attendees of the 2019 CA Coastal Wildlife Disturbance Symposium gather for a group photo

Attendees represented these agencies and organizations:

NOAA, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, National Park Service, CA State Parks, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Dept. of Justice, Monterey County District Attorney’s Office, CA Dept of Fish and Wildlife, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Bureau of Land Management, Seabird Protection Network, Point Blue Conservation Science, Trinidad Coastal Land Trust, Sea Otter Savvy,  MPA Collaborative Network, Humboldt State University, San Diego State University, University of Bristol, Bay Net, Friends of the Elephant Seal, The Marine Mammal Center, Save the Whales, Fast Raft Whale, ExperienceWildlife.com, Projects for Wildlife Podcast, and others. 

Sea otter eating a turban snail. Photo by Erin Rechsteiner

By Gena Bentall

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series

The wavy turban snail, Megastraea undosaPerched on a rocky bluff overlooking the jumbled boulder beach called Rock Crusher on San Nicolas Island, my eye rests steadily on the eyepiece of my Questar telescope, the instrument of choice for sea otter spotters for decades.By the end of the day, I will have a solid red ring the size and shape of the rubber eyecup around my right eye. A female sea otter pops up from a dive, and I quickly click my stopwatch, “Dive time, 35 (seconds)”, I say to my colleague, USGS biologist Joe Tomoleoni, who is recording data at my side.  I flip the scope to high power to zoom in on her prey. With slow gusto, she is hammering a pyramid shaped object on a flat rock on her belly. She rolls over, and the rock is gone, likely stashed in her underarm pocket of loose skin. She now shakes the object like a salt shaker and bites at its base. “She has a wavy turban,” I say, “and she’s shaking it!” Wavy turban snails (Megastaea undosa) are a large marine snail abundant in the kelp forests surrounding the island we call San Nic. She cracks the hard shell on the rock, then shakes the snail out of its fractured home. “It’s a size 2b!” I exclaim, using a handy measuring tool, the mean width of a sea otter’s paw, to estimate size. The female sea otter works on the prey for a minute or so, handing a few bits to her pup who swims over to solicit handouts. Then she dives to search again, “Surface time, one minute, 50 seconds”. This process of watching sea otters dive, forage and eat has been carried out for tens of thousands of dives across decades of study in California. It is the foundation of our understanding of sea otter foraging ecology and their important place in the complex food web of coastal California. For some tagged sea otters along the Monterey Peninsula, the detailed statistics of their forging behavior have been documented for a decade or more, providing an index for exploring how each individual sea otter fits into the complex and dynamic coastal food web.

Research diver records species complexity at San Nicolas Island. Photo by Zach RandellThe coastal ecosystems of California do not exist in a static state. They are continuously influenced by a myriad of factors —climate, disease, fishing, pollution —to name just a few. A change in the abundance of one species may have far ranging effects, with the influence of some, the keystone species, packing a greater punch than others (check out this video). San Nicolas Island is a ideal microcosm in which to study the "sea otter effect" on a California kelp ecosystem. As the resident sea otters of San Nic have grown in number since the translocation project of the late 80s, observations of their foraging behavior help scientists understand how sea otters adapt their diet as their density and distribution around the island changes. Complimentary long-term work by scientists studying the species composition at both sub-tidal and intertidal sites around San Nic, documents how those communities change in response to a suite of factors. These long-term studies were started before the first sea otters were translocated to San Nic with the goal of documenting changes in species abundance as the predators re-established and grew in number. Definitive understanding of the factors influencing the kelp forest ecosystem surrounding the island, however, has proved elusive, with a clear “sea otter effect” muted by the effects of disease and changing climate.   When asked about the challenges of studying such a complex ecosystem, Joe Tomoleoni (who, in addition to being a shore-based biologist is also a diver who has worked on the subtidal San Nic team) reflected, “It’s hard enough to figure out California’s kelp forests in a static state, but with so many variables—temperature, currents, disease, harmful algal blooms, primary productivity, fishing, ocean acidification, etc.—all changing all the time, things get pretty messy in a hurry. These communities have lots of moving parts.  Determining a sea otter effect is difficult because we aren’t able to design an experiment that accounts for all possible variables.  We are left simply observing change and using correlations to piece the puzzle together."

San Nicolas Island, Channel Islands, CaliforniaAfter observing our focal forager for 20 consecutive dives (no small feat with an untagged sea otter on a rugged shore), Joe and I scan the kelp bed for the characteristic backstroke attitude of a new foraging sea otter. The team’s bouts of foraging data collection are peppered among our sea otter survey forays, and this expedition has revealed some exciting changes in how San Nic’s sea otters are inhabiting the island. While the kelp beds of places like Rock Crusher on the southwest end of the island still harbor a fair number of sea otters, on this trip our team spotted the highest numbers ever on the north side, an area that has remained largely uninhabited since the translocation. We find the offshore reef known as The Boilers (see Part 2 of this series) is largely devoid of both kelp surface canopy and sea otters. As sea otters are known to do, perhaps they have abandoned the long-occupied Boilers in favor of possibly richer food supplies along the north shore. By shifting habitat use in this way, sea otters may allow prey at long-occupied places to rebound in a sea otter’s version of crop rotation.

 A San Nic foraging team collects foraging data on the north shoreAs the sea otters of San Nic explore, so must scientists follow and the team scrambles to find new observation perches. Even after decades of watching sea otters forage, I still feel an incomparable giddiness as I await the first prey captures at a new location for my favorite sea otters on the planet. Through my Questar I can see a burst of tiny bubbles (air pushed from the fur by the pressure of water) that marks the location of a diving sea otter. As I fix on the location, the head of a sea otter bursts through the surface, and she immediately assuming the belly-up dining posture unique to her species. “She’s up,” I call out, “Success is yes—HOLY COW!”

 Stay tuned for part 4 of our series on the sea otters of San Nicolas Island...

The author: Gena Bentall has been studying sea otters since 2001. For her graduate thesis she studied the sea otters of San Nicolas Island. She is now the Program Coordinator of Sea Otter Savvy.

A lush giant kelp bed at San Nicolas Island. Photo by Zach Randell

By Claire Mayer

What we eat turns to heat! Everyone has that one friend who lives to eat and not the other way around. The next meal is planned before the current is consumed. And while this is a choice for most humans it is not a choice for our friend the sea otter. Just to stay alive in these cold waters of the Pacific Ocean, sea otters must eat 25% of their body weight per day. If an 80 lb. sea otter ate only Quarter Pounders, he’d have to eat 80 of them every day! Can you imagine chowing down every day on three hearty breakfasts, four lunches, two dinners and then a midnight snack or two? While it may sound glorious to some it would surely require a lot of meal prep!  For sea otters the work is in the foraging ─ the finding and processing of prey.

Being the only marine mammal lacking a thick layer of blubber, sea otters rely on their high metabolism and dense fur to stay warm in a cold ocean. Because the calories they eat are converted to heat this helps maintain their high body temperature (roughly 100 degrees Fahrenheit). To generate the number of calories necessary to fuel the sea otter’s “heat engine” equates to one thing…eating, eating and more eating.

Ouch! A sea otter biting into the anti-predator defense system of an urchin. Photo by Joan TisdaleWhat most don’t know is that finding so much food means very hard work for the sea otter. Not only is it extremely time consuming (in some parts of their range they may spend half of a 24-hour day foraging), but their various foods (aka prey items), have evolved an array of defenses to AVOID being eaten! For prey it pays to be difficult to locate and tough to open. Just what does the average sea otter go through to get a good day’s meal? Try dives to the bottom while holding their breath and kicking against the buoyancy of their fur’s air layer to dig for clams and worms, or patiently prying abalone and clumps of mussels from their rocks along the shore. An abalone meal may require 10 or more dives (and a rock tool) to pry loose. A sea otter can often be seen wrestling a prickly urchin or an angry crab aboard its chest while a stealthy gull stands by waiting for scraps. A sea otter specializing in small marine snails must stuff her underarm pockets full and pulverize each snail on a rock anvil. The struggle is real for the sea otter when it comes to finding food, but find food they must ─ just a few days without sufficient food can mean starvation. Not only does foraging take great effort, but their meal can pinch back (no thanks!) All this eating not only feeds the sea otter but keeps numbers of herbivores like urchins under control helping the kelp forest to thrive.

So the next time you see a sea otter devouring a tasty morsel be happy for the successful forage attempt. Maybe take a moment to appreciate all the hard work, time and energy that went into that dive, pry or dig in the sand. Be mindful too of the endless food choices within our arms' reach at the grocery store as compared to the limited options available to a sea otter foraging for their survivial or that of their offspring. Just as we don’t like our own precious mealtimes being interrupted let those sea otters dine in peace. As they finish that meal, they will already be thinking about the next! 

About guest blogger Claire Mayer: Claire was born and raised in Monterey, California. She is a former animal care volunteer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Sea Otter Research and Conservation program. She currently works as a Veterinary Assistant in Carmel, California. 

Read about the science of sea otter foraging:

Individual variation in prey selection by sea otters, 2003.pdf

Food limitation leads to behavioral diversification, 2008.pdf