Alaska records concentrate around Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and Prince William Sound, tracing the kelp forests and rocky shallows sea otters depend on along the Southcentral and Southeast coast. Almost every sighting comes from at or near sea level, right where the animals raft, groom, and forage just offshore.
Sea otters carry the densest fur of any mammal, thick enough to trap a layer of air for warmth since they don’t have blubber like most marine mammals. They often float on their backs to crack open a clam or urchin with a rock balanced on their chest, a rare case of tool use in a marine mammal, and by keeping urchin numbers down they help protect the kelp forest itself.
Records climb through the summer months, when calm water and long daylight make otters easier to spot from a boat or shoreline as they groom and forage. A female typically raises just one pup roughly every fourteen months, one of the slowest reproductive rates of any marine mammal, which is part of why the species remains listed as Endangered even a century after Alaska’s fur trade nearly wiped it out.
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