Historic population sizes, like the otters themselves, are fuzzy.

Prized for their luxurious warm pelts, sea otters along vast stretches of the north Pacific Rim were decimated by the European fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. It wasn’t just this remote British Columbian bay where sea otters disappeared. Otters were not entirely new on this section of windswept Pacific coast, but prior to these transplants the last sea otter seen in Checleset Bay was in 1929, just before it was shot. Sea otter biologists hoped these otters would start a new colony in the forest-fringed waters of Checleset Bay, British Columbia. Canadian and US biologists had a plan – one they didn’t discuss with First Nations. But if sea otter elders in Checleset Bay told floating bedtime stories to modern day pups, they might tell of their ancestors’ bizarre flying adventure.īeginning in 1969, sea otters from Amchitka and Prince William Sound in Alaska were packed onto planes and flown on a long journey south.

Otter notes review