Sea Otter Politics: A Split-Screen Controversy

“The ‘truth’ about this marine mammal …and the future of West Coast shellfishing…” was the subheading of an article that I wrote about Sea Otters in 1984 –the “fish of the month” in Pacific Fishing magazine.
The article began with a quote from abalone diver Rudy Mangue: “That’s the beginning – when you start seeing broken shells. First one shell, then five…and suddenly sea otters are there and the resource is gone.”

While the sea otter vs. shellfish conference in Arroyo Grande was the catalyst that lured me into fisheries, the sea otter conflict with abalone tossed me headlong into the political mosh pit. By 1984, sea otters had already reclaimed California’s most prolific commercially harvested abalone beds between Monterey and Morro Bay, and were expanding south toward Point Conception. Rudy Mangue and Jimmy Finch, along with other abalone divers who had begun diving in Morro Bay (once-proclaimed the Abalone Capital of the World) had already emigrated south to Santa Barbara.

However, the sea otter vs. abalone conflict was really a split-screen controversy: Environmentalists like Friends of the Sea Otter, Defenders of Wildlife and many other eNGO groups vocally heralded the return of sea otters from near extinction in California. A small pod of about 50 otters, refugees from the fur trade, had been discovered near Bixby Creek in Monterey County in the 1930s, and had expanded both by number and range in the decades since. Sea otters are essential for a healthy ecosystem, enviros cried. They pointed to mountainous piles of abalone shells outside Morro Bay abalone processors like Abalone Bill Pierce, and accused the divers of overfishing. But ab divers, and some scientists, told a far different story.

My investigative research followed a winding path that led to meetings with such characters as Ernie Porter – a veteran Morro Bay ab diver who had followed the trail of broken abalone shells south and made a map of the destruction as part of a lobbying effort to urge the Department of Fish and Game to do something, like manage sea otters.

I also met Glen Bickford, a pioneer hard-hat abalone diver who had worked out of Morro Bay along with the Pierces. Glen Bickford arrived in 1936 and dove commercially for abalone for 13 years, then dove another 20 years on the Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) abalone survey team. He worked with Fish and Game biologist Keith Cox to document the disappearance of abalone from Stillwater Cove in Monterey in 1952 after a herd of sea otters had moved in. Glen saw the broken shells with his own eyes — but at that time nobody but abalone divers and CDFG biologists believed that sea otters could do such damage.

When I met Glen, he was retired, still living in Morro Bay with half a roomful of diaries and wooly memories of the early years. He remarked to me: “The evidence is conclusive and absolute. But arguing about sea otters and shellfish is like arguing religion or politics. You can’t convince anybody.”

My research also led me to Alaska, where sea otter predation on Dungeness crab and razor clams became evident in northeastern Prince William Sound around 1976. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) closed the Orca Inlet Dungeness fishery for the first time in 1980. Alaska was home to more than 150,000 otters at the time of my Sea Otter article, extending along a jagged coastline thought to be longer than the circumference of the earth. ADFG fishery managers felt the evidence warranted sea otter management in areas to protect important shellfish resources: zonal management.

However, state management was preempted in 1972 by the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which transferred jurisdiction for all marine mammals to the federal government. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) assumed protective custody of sea otters, along with a mandate to return the animals to their Optimum Sustainable Population (OSP). Because Alaskan otters already were near OSP, Alaska could apply for a return of state management, but under federal guidelines. Lew Pamplin, then Director of ADFG’s Division of Game, commented, “We could strangle ourselves, jumping through all the hoops…. [but] from a resource standpoint to maintain a balance among a multitude of resources, it’s important for Alaska to regain management.” John Burns, then ADFG’s marine mammal coordinator, added, “The areas, numbers and impacts are more vast in Alaska, but the controversy over sea otters is the same as in California.”

With one noteworthy exception: in 1977 California sea otters were designated as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), listed as a separate subspecies – the “southern sea otter” — an isolated population potentially jeopardized by a threat of major oil spill. The listing was a major victory for Friends of the Sea Otter. And the political dance got lively – now it enveloped the oil industry.

The oil industry was then developing offshore oil resources in the Santa Maria basin, near the southern end of the sea otter’s range on the central coast. The FWS proposed to translocate a group of sea otters to establish a separate breeding colony to offset the oil spill risk. The Service had spent a half million dollars on baseline research at San Nicolas Island, gateway to the Channel Islands and home to lucrative fisheries for abalone, sea urchins, lobster, crab — fisheries valued at an estimated dockside value of $40 million or more. Fishermen thought the idea of translocation to San Nic. was crazy — the Southern California Bight was also home to more than a dozen oil rigs at the time, not to mention intense vessel traffic into the Port of Los Angeles – but Chevron had installed platforms in the OCS Santa Maria Basin in 1985 and 1986 that might be jeopardized by continued sea otter expansion.

The oil industry wound up playing a major role in the translocation effort (albeit largely behind the curtain). A clause in the ESA allowed the FWS, in essence, to manage a threatened species by translocating an “experimental population” as a means of establishing a reserve breeding colony, but the MMPA provided no such authority.

Congress intervened. Following frenetic lobbying efforts by fishermen (including me), enviros and, quietly, the oil industry, Congress passed a compromise bill that became PL 99-625, which authorized FWS to translocate sea otters to San Nicolas Island, but with caveats. Requirements included designating a management zone in the Southern California Bight south of Point Conception outside the translocation zone, to alleviate the oil spill risk and protect valuable shellfish fisheries. The law also required that all otters found in the management zone be relocated, using nonlethal means. Among other provisions, it also required removal of sea otters from San Nicolas Island if the translocation project was declared a failure.

During Congressional hearings, Congressman John Breaux from Louisiana, chair of the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation, testified, “The sea otter is being used as a vehicle to stop oil development. A tanker spill is a greater risk and we must do all we can to prevent that. But why does there have to be a translocation?” CDFW sea otter biologist Bob Hardy commented, “Sea otters make drastic changes to the ecosystem. But we don’t agree that we need otters to have a healthy balance. ‘Healthy’ is a value judgement. FWS focuses its research to make sea otters look good. Its responsibility is to recover otters and that’s being hindered by a part of the public that values shellfish.”

Enacted in 1986, PL 99-625 was precedent setting: the first time a threatened marine mammal was allowed to be zonally managed. The significance of this for Southern California fisheries was huge: for the first time, accidental take in net and trap fisheries in the management zone would be allowed under the ESA because these otters were designated as part of the “experimental population,” and weren’t supposed to migrate away from the translocation zone at San Nicolas Island.

So, what happened after my Sea Otter story ended? I have haunting, frustrating memories of how the politics played out in the nearly 40 years that followed.
Fishermen had argued all along that not only would sea otters decimate shellfish, they would move, as Alaskan otters had demonstrated for decades. Regardless, FWS scientists, who insisted that sea otters would stay at the island, translocated the first group of otters to San Nicolas Island in 1987. Between 1987 and 1990, the Service moved 140 otters to the Island. Many swam back to the central coast, and some moved into the management zone.

Between 1987 and 1993, the Service and CDFW captured and removed 24 otters from the management zone. The Service stopped translocating otters in 1991 because of the high rate of dispersal and poor survival. The fate of about half of the translocated otters was never determined. By 1991, only 14 otters remained at the island, according to FWS records. But in 1993, two recaptured otters were found dead, so FWS suspended their recapture efforts in the management zone, concluding that non-lethal capture techniques were labor intensive and an inefficient way to contain sea otters.

In 1997, CDFW stated that it was discontinuing its sea otter program. In 1998, about 100 sea otters moved south of Point Conception and into the management zone, decimating abalone in the area and inaugurating a seasonal pattern that has continued. Subsequent radio-telemetry studies documented that yes, sea otters can and do move great distances throughout their range, just as in Alaska. FWS scientists, following advice from the Southern Sea Otter Recovery Team, then decided that translocation was not good for sea otter recovery. In 1999, FWS began recommending that the translocation be declared a failure because less than 25 otters remained at San Nicolas Island after three years, as stipulated in the translocation plan. By 2003, FWS issued its final Revised Recovery Plan, in which it recommended “…that it would be in the best interest of southern sea otter recovery to declare the translocation program a failure, to discontinue maintenance of an otter-free zone, and to allow the sea otters currently at San Nicolas Island to remain there.”

But that recommendation was contrary to the compromise mandated in in PL 99-625 to remove otters from San Nicolas Island if translocation failed.

In 2011, after two years of meetings, re-evaluations and a revised Environmental Impact Statement, FWS finally issued its proposed rule, recommending removal of all regulations governing the southern sea otter translocation program, including associated management actions. The PR also amended the reference to PL 99-625, eliminating it. The PR justified the action in the belief that the translocation program had failed to achieve its objectives; Criterion 2 of the translocation plan had been met because less than 25 otters remained at the Island after three years. The PR also stated that the Service had delayed declaring the failure in part because CDFW had expressed a desire to continue zonal management of sea otters.

Of note: by 2011, sea otters from the parent population were moving into the management zone routinely. The Service finally admitted that emigration from San Nicolas Island was the primary reason for the small size remaining at the Island in the translocation’s early years. As of December 2010, up to 46 otters had been counted at San Nicolas Island. At least 151 pups were known to have been born during the program.

The crowning blow, however, was the Service’s decision made after the Exxon Valdez spill that San Nicolas Island sea otters would not be isolated from the impacts of a single large oil spill, and because of the high rate of dispersal, it was unlikely that sea otters translocated to San Nicolas Island would ever reach the 150 resident animals determined to be sufficient to serve as a “self-sustaining reserve colony.” The Service acknowledged, “…we now know that the deep ocean channels surrounding the island do not present the anticipated barrier to dispersal.”

So the translocation program ended; the Final Rule became effective December 19, 2012. And the sea otters translocated to San Nicolas Island remained in place. Angry and feeling betrayed, Southern California fishermen filed a lawsuit, challenging the FWS decision. But the District, Appellate and finally US Supreme Court agreed with the federal decision and denied the fishermen’s complaints. The Supreme Court decision to deny came in September 2018, six years after the final rule authorized the end the program, removing the protection for fisheries.

Epilogue: As of April 2023, the sea otter population count at San Nicolas Island was 146 sea otters, a sixfold increase since 2000. The population has maintained steady growth, averaging about 10 percent per year and 150 total individuals. Meanwhile, the parent population on the central coast reached a peak of 3,272 otters in 2016, but dropped to about 2,962 as of 2019. A significant source of mortality on the central coast appears to be inflicted by white sharks.

Although the San Nicolas Island translocation program was officially declared unsuccessful in 2012, the population has rebounded and is now considered a success. In fact, the FWS has recently talked about translocating sea otters to Northern California or Oregon – but without the zonal management and containment program compromise that fishery representatives negotiated in PL 99-625.

In the final analysis, the Friends of the Sea Otter and FWS got what they wanted in the first place:
sea otters have expanded their range in California and the population is increasing. By now the general consensus is that sea otters and shellfish fisheries cannot co-exist at the same time in the same place. So my 1984 Sea Otter article has come full circle: “Somebody’s going to lose some shellfish. The question remains, who?”