EVOS Sea Otter Fact Sheet

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling crude oil into the waters of western Prince William Sound and threatening a huge numbers of animals, including up to 30,000 sea otters.

Upon learning of this catastrophe, the Vancouver Aquarium immediately sent its vet, Dr. Dave Huff, and members of its Marine Mammal Rescue team up to Alaska to help the sea otters suffering from the effects of oil exposure. Over the course of the rescue and rehabilitation effort, the team tried to help hundreds of animals on-site, many of whom were too sick to survive. It is estimated that perhaps as many as 5,000 otters eventually perished as a result of the spill. A few rescued animals that were deemed unreleasable into the wild and in need of long-term care were fortunate to find homes in aquariums.  The Vancouver Aquarium was able to provide homes for eight of these young survivors, including Nyac.

At about 20 years old, Nyac was an elderly otter. When she arrived at approximately six months old, she was treated by our animal care team for liver problems directly attributable to the effects of the oil exposure. She was selected for intensive care here at the Aquarium because despite her ailing state, she maintained a healthy appetite and remained very alert. All the otters at the Vancouver Aquarium are given regular physicals and until the end, Nyac’s liver showed no signs of damage. Nyac is the only known survivor of the Exxon Valdez oil spill to have successfully had a pup in an Aquarium, a female named Kipnuk born in 1993, then later sent to an aquarium in Antwerp.

Nyac kept active by playing or resting with the other sea otters Tanu, Milo and Elfin. Some of her favourite activities included eating live crab or sea urchins, hauling out and rolling around in ice provided by the animal care staff, and she was often spotted sleeping while rafting, or “holding hands”, with Milo. She was a wonderful ambassador for her wild counterparts as we tell her story to visitors and remind them of the importance of conserving natural habitats.

Nyac was one of the most popular animals in our Aquadopt program, whereby members of the public can “adopt” one of the animals at the Aquarium that we take care of. The adoptive family receives an “adoption” certificate, a fact sheet on the animal, a holiday card and is invited to a family reunion that we hold once a year. Twenty-four families had adopted Nyac – 20% of the people participating in this program. For more information on Aquadopt, please visit vanaqua.org.

The Aquarium continues to be able to provide homes for abandoned and rescued sea otter pups. Two of the Aquarium’s younger otters, Elfin and Tanu, were orphaned and rescued by the Alaska SeaLife Center, which rehabilitates animals at a facility in Seward, Alaska, built with partial funding from The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement Fund.

Did you know?

• Sea otters have the thickest fur in the animal kingdom. An adult has between 800 million to one billion individual hairs (roughly 100,000 or more per square centimetre). They depend on their fur, as they have no blubber to keep them warm.
• Sea otters are one of the few mammals other than primates that use tools. They often use rocks to smash open their food.
• Oil spills are the greatest threat to otters because their fur loses its buoyancy and insulating capacity, leading to hypothermia and pneumonia. Also, when they try to clean their oiled fur, they ingest oil, which has detrimental effects on their kidneys, liver and lungs.
• Sea otters have high metabolisms and eat up to 30% of their body weight a day.
• Sea otters can’t swim at birth, so they are born with a special coat called a ‘lanugo’ that acts as a life preserver and keeps the pup floating at the water’s surface. It takes about two months for sea otter pups to lose its lanugo and then they are able to dive.

Sea Otters in B.C.

• Due to the fur trade, sea otters did not exist in B.C. between 1929 and 1969. They were reintroduced between 1969 and 1972, when 89 otters from Amchitka and Prince William Sound were relocated to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Today, B.C’s sea otter population is 3,200 and growing at an average rate of 15.6% per year.
• Translocated populations such as this one are thought to have higher growth rates because they are introduced to areas that have not been recently inhabited by sea otters, and consequently have a high abundance of food resources.
• Sea otters in B.C. are a threatened species under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA).

Sea Otters in California

• The southern or California sea otter is a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act and is also protected under California state law and by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
• The southern sea otter was thought to be extinct after the fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. But in 1938, a small population of sea otters was discovered living off of the Big Sur Coast. This population slowly expanded, and is now at around 2,000.

Sea Otters in Alaska

• The commercial fur hunt began with the Russians in the western Pacific and the far western Aleutian Islands. The hunt moved eastward as sea otters were eliminated from many of the Aleutian Islands. It is estimated that between 500,000 and one million sea otters were killed between 1742 and 1911.
• Before the mid 1990’s, there were about 8,000 sea otters in the Aleutian Islands. They began to decline drastically in the mid-90’s, dropping down to 2,000 and now the population is between 500-1,000. Scientists at the Vancouver Aquarium are part of a large network trying to determine the cause.