I want to thank everyone who emailed me with gentle suggestions that the otters we saw were river otters. (the other otter).

And a big thankyou to Kevin Li, for all his digging and forwarding of pictures to various otter experts.

Ok so this it the scoop on Sea Otters: there has been two records of Sea Otters in the Puget sound area. One at McAllister Creek and the other at Redondo, both were trapped and released back on the coast.

Sea otters will eat everything river otters will eat and more. Sea Otters go on to the beach only rarely, and when they do they are very cumbersome and slow. Sea Otters will have shorter tails, float on their backs while eating, River otters will feed mostly from the back up position.

I have decided that the lighting and action of these otters is what made us think they were a lighter head color then they actually were.

some websites:


http://www.twingroves.district96.k12.il.us/Wetlands/RiverOtter/RiverVSSeaOtter.html

http://www.vanaqua.org/education/aquafacts/seaotters.html

thanks again to everyone that emailed me, we had a great time watching these two eat that amount of fish in such a short time.

Dawn Bailey
Eatonville, WA
mailto:dawnsdog at rainierconnect.com

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