Dr. Chris J. Law

So everything it does, everything about their...

physiology is very different compared to other river otters.

And sea otters are primarily just found in the ocean, whereas river otters, especially like North American river otters and Eurasian otters will actually go into the marine environment as well.

So you can find, you can be in locations like in Washington where there will be both river otters and sea otters.

Sea otters?

Yeah, so river otters have dens that they hang out.

I've never actually seen one, but yeah, presumably along the shore.

But then sea otters actually just float in the water.

And I'm sure you've heard stories of where they can wrap themselves in some kelp so they don't float away and they can take a nap that way.

They're relatively small marine mammals.

They burn a lot of heat, so they have to sleep a lot to refuel.

And you always see them just taking a snooze to conserve some energy.

So I don't I actually don't know, because I remember giving a presentation at this, I think, sea otter conference.

And I had an image of that, you know, that image of two sea otters holding hands that was taken at one of the aquariums.

Somebody gave me shit for it without doing that because she said that they don't hold hands in the wild.

But then apparently a couple weeks or months later, there's like some photos of wild otters holding hands.

So I don't know.

Oh, yeah, there's a huge effort out all the major aquariums.

So like the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, the Seattle Aquarium in Washington, I'm sure up in BC and Alaska also has great efforts.

But the one I'm most familiar with are the ones down in Central Coast, California, where the Monterey Bay Aquarium, UC Santa Cruz.