Sea otter

“ A party of Indians often go on a sea-otter hunt, for the animal is covered with fine black fur, through which are scattered long white hairs. It is very beautiful, and the white traders are always willing to pay a large sum for a sea-otter skin.
The hunters must paddle quite a distance out to sea before they begin to look for an otter’s nose to appear above the surface of the water as the creature comes up to breathe. The moment it is seen, they swing their canoes around in a wide circle. ”

“ If the tiniest bit of a fire is lighted to windward of him, even miles away, he will scent it and be off. If a man walks on a beach, many tides must wash out the scent of his footsteps before a sea-otter will approach that place. So when the wind is off shore the hunters have to go without fire, even for cooking, in winter as well as in summer, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then, too, the sea-otter never really comes ashore, but spends most of his time in the water among the great kelp-beds that you have seen floating in the North Pacific. Even their young are born in those floating cradles. ”

“ The sea-otter is a large animal, having fine, close black fur, sprinkled with long, white-tipped hairs, which strongly individualize it and add much to its beauty. Its pelt is used mostly for trimming, being both too heavy and too expensive for making up into entire garments. The size of a full-grown skin is about four feet in length by about two and a half wide. It is a solitary marine animal, never seen in numbers, rarely even with a mate, and is extremely shy, demanding great patience and shrewdness in the hunter to insure its capture. ”

“ There are two species, the common otter and the sea otter, which latter is only found in the North Pacific and is now quite rare. Of the common otter there are some three or four varieties, differing only in size and color. The habits of the otter are very little known by the average man, and many of the trappers know little about this animal. They are rambling [Pg 142] animals, traveling the streams and lakes for great distances. They will travel sometimes ten or fifteen miles to visit some certain lake and perhaps will only stay there over night. ”

“ Little does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new seal-skin sacque, that the quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme daring, and does to-day—that the possession of the sea-otter’s coat calls for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur-bearing or economic animal known to savage or civilized man. ”

“ The sea-otter is rarely seen on land, but eats, sleeps, and is said even to bring forth its young in the water. It is provided with a tail, has legs with webbed feet, and handles its food with its fore-paws, and is in fact an otter. ”

“ Sea otters, distant relatives of land otters, are heavy-bodied animals, about 4 feet long, with broad webbed hind feet. When in the water they have a general resemblance to seals, whose mode of life is similar to theirs. Their fur is extremely dense and on the skins of adult males is almost black, closely sprinkled with long white-tipped hairs. The fur of prime skins has a silky luster, equaled in beauty by only the finest silver-tipped fox skins. For centuries sea-otter fur has been highly prized and single skins have brought more than $1,000 in the London market. ”

“ There are some, indeed, that never leave the water night nor day; yet no one calls them amphibious birds. I have seen the Otter, in his free, unfettered, and unmolested condition, both in the sea and the river, go into the water, and disappear many a time, and I have often watched for his reappearance. ”

“ This might be at Atka, where the finest otter hunters in the world lived, or on the south shore of Oonalaska, or in Cook's Inlet where the rip of the tide runs a mill-race, or just off Kadiak on the Saanach coast, where twenty miles of beach boulders and surf waters and little islets of sea-kelp provide ideal fields for the sea-otter. Here the sweeping tides and {70} booming back-wash keep up such a roar of tumbling seas, the shy, wary otter, alert as an eagle, do not easily get scent or sound of human intruder. Surf washes out the scent of the man track. ”

“ Only natives were allowed to kill otter until 1878, when white men married to native women were permitted by the Secretary of the Treasury to consider themselves, and to be considered, natives, so far as hunting privileges were concerned.
The rarest and most valuable of otter are the deep-sea otter, which never go ashore, as do the "rock-hobbers," unless driven there by unusual storms. "Silver-tips"—deep-sea otter having a silvery tinge on the tips of the fur—bring the most fabulous prices. ”

“ The common Otter sometimes takes to the sea; but, on the eastern coasts of Northern Asia and the opposite shores of North America, true Sea Otters are met with, chiefly about the numerous rocky islands which fringe those coasts. The Sea Otter in its habits resembles the seals more than the common species ”

“ There is no sexual dissimilarity in color or size, and both male and female manifest the same intense shyness and aversion to man, coupled with the greatest solicitude for their young, which they bring into existence at all seasons of the year, for the natives capture young pups in every calendar month. As the hunters never have found the mothers and their offspring on the rocks or beaches, they affirm that the birth of a sea-otter takes place on the numerous floating kelp-beds which cover large areas of the ocean south of the Aleutian chain and off the entire expanse of the northwest coast. ”

“ Artist's brush and novelist's pen have drawn all the romance and the glamour and the adventure of the beaver hunter's life, but the sea-otter hunter's life is {324} almost an untold tale. Pacific Coast Indians were employed by the white traders for this wildest of hunting. The sea otter is like neither otter nor beaver, though possessing habits akin to both. ”

“ Our naturalists seem to be very generally agreed that the sea otter and that of our rivers and fresh-water lakes are one and the same animal,—an opinion from which we are not at this moment prepared to dissent, though the animal referred to above seemed to us to be larger in size, blacker in colour, with more prominent ears, and a bigger, bushier tail than any specimen, living or dead, that had hitherto come under our notice. ”

“ The creature has been hotly pursued for a long time on account of its valuable fur. Instead of feeding and breeding upon the shore in places readily accessible to its pursuers, the Sea-Otter has now taken to the open sea in a greater degree. ”

“ The Otter (fig. 65.) is a voracious animal, but more fond of fish than flesh, and is seldom found but at the sides of lakes and rivers. He swims with more facility than the beaver, who has membranes on his hind feet only, and whose toes on the fore feet are separate, whereas the otter has membranes on all his feet; and he can scarcely walk faster than he swims. He never ventures to the sea like the beaver, but swims up and down the rivers to considerable distances. Although he can remain a long time under water be cannot be properly called an amphibious animal ”

“ Though originally a land animal, the otter is now also master of the water. He has webbed feet and a long, sea lion-like neck, which give him the appearance of an animal especially fitted for water travel. He outswims fish and successfully fights the wolf and the beaver in the water. He still has, however, extraordinary ability on land, where he goes long journeys and defends himself against formidable enemies. There are straggling otters which invade the realm of the squirrel by climbing trees. ”

“ Sea otter
Latax lutris nereis Merriam, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 17: 159, October 6, 1904.
Enhydra lutris nereis Grinnell, Univ. California Publ. Zoöl., 21: 316, January 27, 1923.
Type.—Obtained on San Miguel Island, Santa Barbara Islands, by G. M. McGuire in 1904; type in United States National Museum.
Distribution.—Formerly occurred along the ocean coast of Washington. Now extinct there.
Description.—Adult sea otters reach a length of six feet. The body is stout, long and round; the tail is short, flattened and about a foot in length. The legs are short and thick. ”

“ The fur is long, soft and extremely dense. The color of the body is various shades of rich, dark brown. Scattered white hairs often give the coat a frosted appearance. The heads of the adults are pale grey, occasionally almost white.
The sea otter once ranged from the Gulf of California north along the west coast of North America to Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Siberia and Japan. It is now found only in a small area along the coast of California and in remote islands of the north Pacific. Once abundant along the coast of Washington, it is now completely extinct there. ”

“ It requires, as we have shown, great energy, hardihood, and patient application to effect its capture, but the sea-otter is a most beneficent gift of Providence to these aborigines, and administers, as well, to the pride of 167the fashionable world. The natives in former times attached great importance to preparing themselves for hunting the sea-otter, fasting, bathing, and performing certain mystic rites before embarking for the purpose. ”

“ Individual otters vary in size. The total length from the nose to the end of the tail averages about 31⁄2 ft., of which the tail occupies 1 ft. 3 or 4 in. The weight of a full-sized male is from 18 to 24 ℔, that of a female about 4 ℔ less.
As the otter lives almost exclusively on fish, it is rarely met with far from water, and usually frequents the shores of brooks, rivers, lakes and, in some localities, the sea itself. It is a most expert swimmer and diver, easily overtaking and seizing fish in the water; but when it has captured its prey it brings it to shore to devour. ”

“ That day very heavy rain fell, and continued till a late hour, soaking the country-side and causing even the cave to drip, to the discomfort of the otters, who repaired there on the morrow. This decided the otter to make without further delay for the sea, and that night, after a big feast on the mussels, she led the cubs along the widening reaches to the estuary and couched on an island at the meeting of the waters. ”

“ They crowd upon the rocks as thickly as they can, and blink there all day long unless disturbed by the approach of a boat, when they dive clumsily but quickly. Occasionally, one sees an otter, with seal-like head above the surface of the water, swimming swiftly from haunt to haunt in pursuit of the bass ”

“ A faint whistle sounds up the mere: an otter is out for its nightly raid. As I have observed him this creature is not an arch-enemy of trout. In wanton sport he may mutilate numbers of fish, but his chief diet is the freshwater crayfish. A casual examination of an otter’s hole will prove so much from the appearance of the excreta; and, while you are at such close quarters, note the plenty of fish-life in the pools near by. No further evidence is needed to correct much misjudgment. In the water the otter is graceful; in the meadows he lopes along at great speed when such is necessary. ”

“ Whenever an owner dies, say the menials at the Hall, a great bough is riven from the giant oak; whenever a new heir comes to the estate, a white fawn is born. Under the dark slabs by the river the otters breed; but it is impossible to dislodge them. Iron-sinewed, shaggy otter-hounds have tried, but never with success. The fishermen complain of the quantity of fish which the otter destroys. Trout are found dead on the rocks; salmon are there bitten in the shoulder, but only partially eaten. The evolutions of the otter in its native element are the poetry of motion minus only the metre. ”

“ There is a report for the year 1852, as follows: 1,231 sea-otters, 129 young sea-otters, 2,948 common otters, 14,486 fur-seals, 107 bears, 13,300 beavers, 2 wolves, 458 sables, 243 lynxes, 163 mole-skins, 1,504 pairs of castoreum, 684 black foxes, 1,590 cross foxes, 5,174 red foxes, 2,359 blue Arctic foxes, 355 white Arctic foxes, and also 31 foxes called white, perhaps albinos. ”

“ It has small, prominent eyes, and little round ears, which are almost hidden in its soft brown fur.
The fish-otter is like a school-boy in its fondness for sliding down hill. Wherever there are bands of otters, slides are found worn on the slopes leading down to the shores of ponds and rivers, in the snow in the winter, and in the soft mud in the summer. Troops of otters have often been seen amusing themselves in this odd fashion. They slide lying on the ground, with the fore-feet bent backward, and push themselves forward with the hind-feet. ”

“ He can swim most elegantly, and he is a beautiful diver. Let a fish glide underneath him, and he is after it in a moment; and as the fish darts here and there to escape, the Otter follows each rapid movement with unerring precision. When the fish is caught, the Otter carries it to the bank and makes a meal. But the Otter is like naughty Jack who leaves a saucy plate—he spoils much more fish than he eats. The trout and other fish are so much alarmed at the appearance of an Otter, that they will sometimes fling themselves on the bank to get out of his way. ”