Welcome Back pLoon (sea otter)
Or how the Otter changed both the sea & history
Seen through window at Triple
Island
The original North Coast gold
rush
Sea Otters Unique Fur – warmth
& flotation
Sea Otters are voracious. but
exagerated
Otter’s Past Revenge &
future promise
Seen through window at Triple Island
Erik, the fellow I work with, saw it first. A casual look out the lighthouse window suddenly stopped him in mid sentence. “What is that?! Where’s the telescope?
That isn’t a seal. It’s a sea otter!”
I grabbed my camcorder. I needed proof. Lots of people claim to see sea otters, but what they have really seen is a large river otter. Sea otters have been absent from North Coast for maybe 150 years.
There is a Tsimshian story about how Aleut hunters using kayaks to pillage those once plentiful otters in K’igooba (‘Big Bay’ according to Susan Marsden). The story ends withal the remaining pLoon leaving-- “going towards the north wind”.
And now they are coming back?
The original North Coast gold rush
On another level, the sea otter has transformed North Coast. When the English explorer Captain Cook took a few sea otter skins and offered them for sale in Canton China fur market, he realized a huge profit. For maybe 20 years the 300% profits of maritime fur trade lured hundreds of sailing ships to trade along the BC Coast.
One recent book, The Sea Otter Chiefs, argues that trade transformed simple chiefdoms into a ‘higher’ form of social organization – a proto-state – in order to control wider areas than hunter – gatherers required. Cuneah (Haida), Maquina (Nootka) and Legaik (Tsimshian) are his chiefs chosen to trace this transformation. At another level this can be followed visually. A famous painting of Cuneah made by Bascome in 1793 shows him clad in a sea otter cape. But soon European cloth had replaced skins.
Sea Otters Unique Fur – warmth & flotation
It was the unique fur of the sea otter that was its undoing. It floats on it’s back, as it was doing that day at Triple, due its ‘dry suit’. The inner guard hairs retain a layer of air for insulation next to the skin. The waterproof outer hairs keep the water off. Thus so much of its life is spent grooming and cleaning that fur.
The female has the more lustrous fur, unfortunately for the survival of the species. A newborn pup is said to ‘float like a cork’. It is the female that tends for that single offspring. Her chest serving as both baby carriage and “lunch table’
Sea Otters are voracious. but exagerated
Taking a large gulp of air they make short dives looking for slow moving fish or sedentary invertebrates like sea urchins or abalone. A special skin flap under the arms acts like a “shopping bag” to carry food until it surfaces again. Another otter trick is to ‘drink salt water’. Specialized kidneys allow it to never thirst.
Because sea otters have no body fat and rely entirely upon their fur to keep them warm, they have to continuously eat food to stoke that heat engine. Up to 30% of its body weight. Every day of its life!
Otter’s Past Revenge & future promise
PLoon had its revenge. When it left, all its favorite foods began to accumulate—especially sea urchins. These spiny ‘lawn mowers’ have come to devastate huge areas huge areas of the rocky shores – eating all the kelp and other algae and leaving nothing but ‘barrens’ behind. No kelp forests, meant fewer fish, snails, etc., diversity was lost.
So welcome back pLoon . May you find us worthy this time and stay once again among us.
As we looked out the lighthouse window, we saw not merely a lone sea otter lolling on its back. We saw the promise of pLoon returning and bringing back the great kelp forests of yester year.
