From the Aleutian Islands to British Columbia, sea otters number approximately 70,000, though their concentrations and disbursement vary region by region.
To better monitor northern sea otters in Alaska, the Fish and Wildlife Service has divided the Alaskan sea otter range into three distinct population segments (DPS): the southeast, southcentral, and southwest populations. Immigration between these areas is rare. Because the southwest population has experienced such a rapid decline in numbers, they have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and Rep. Young’s bill only targets the non-threatened southcentral and southwestern sea otters for management. |
The southcentral DPS is perhaps the most successful sea otter population with the most recent survey, conducted between 2000 and 2003, counting 12,774 otters. However, these sea otters still face challenges. In 1989, an Exxon-Valdez oil tanker struck a shallow reef in the Prince William Sound, killing nearly 4,000 sea otters in the ensuing oil spill. Since then, studies have shown that the sea otter population and parts of the nearshore ecosystem are only slowly recovering from that disaster.
The Southeast DPS
The southeast DPS is the successful result of a translocation program in the 1960s that established 13 colonies of sea otters in southeast Alaska. From these colonies the population has grown to 9,136 sea otters based on aerial surveys from 2006 and 2007.
Growth, however, has been unequal within the southeast DPS. Dividing the range into two segments (northern and southern segments) reveals that the growth in population numbers has been largely concentrated in the southern segment and within Glacier Bay National Park in the northern segment. Outside of Glacier Bay, the growth rate of the northern population has struggled and either declined or stabilized in the last few decades, even though abundant habitat remains unutilized by otters. |
