At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, humans pair lost pups with a surrogate mom, then back off and let the otter mom teach the pup the ropes of otter life.
Sea otter life isn’t always about splashing in the waves and lounging in the kelp.
Jessica Fujii, the aquarium’s sea otter program manager, said the group is the only sea otter rescue facility that actively runs a surrogacy program. “We’re the ones that developed it and started testing it,” she said. Pups over nine weeks old tend to do OK on their own and are released as soon as they’re healthy. The younger ones get paired up with a surrogate mom — a female otter that’s non-releasable because of medical issues or other factors preventing their success in the wild. The aquarium has had about 10 surrogate moms over the past two decades.
“The peak in success is generally between the second and the third release and then by the fourth, you’re kind of done,” said Nicholson. “By the fourth release, you’re handling them too much and they’re also getting kind of desensitized. …You really want them to go out on their first time and be fine.”Nicholson and her team wanted to know what factors most impacted the success or failure of release so they could fine-tune the program.
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