September 3, 2006

Today was spent conducting 5 minute otter surveys of the "raft" in Moss Landing Harbor. At this time a large percentage of the otters live in this area. That has not always been the case. When doing the five minute surveys, you record the behavior of each otter in the raft scanning from left to right. One of the goals of this type of survey is to see if sea otter behavior is different when they are gathered in a raft as opposed to being separated from the raft. The photo on the right is of a elderly sea otter. Approximate age of sea otters is determined by the amount of grizzling (grey fur) on the face.