Dr. Chris J. Law

the U.S.

Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife, basically all of these organizations, they do all of this great outreach work and also a lot of work with the wild populations to make sure that the population is doing well, that individuals are healthy, and that, you know, all the possible things that could affect them are looked into.

Yeah.

So I guess it's very different depending on what population of sea otters you're talking about.

So that kelp to urchin to sea otter system is really describing the Alaskan populations pretty well.

So that classic killer whale is eating the sea otters, which then increases urchins to

which then decreases kelp forest.

But then in California, the system's a little bit different.

Where the sea otter population is actually doing relatively stable.

So I think there's about maybe 3,000 individuals in coastal California.

I could be wrong on that.

I have to check my numbers.

But basically, the idea is that they are kind of constrained between Point Conception down south and Half Moon Bay up north.

And the reason why they can't expand is because they're being attacked by sharks up north.

And I guess fishermen are pushing them back up from the south, so they can't really expand.

And that way, they're more like this carrying capacity where

They're running out of food and the otter population can't really increase because of that.

It basically is very, um, it's basically just.

Yeah.

Yeah.