While they have no way of knowing it, southern sea otters – a threatened species once thought to be extinct – scored a big win last week.
In February 2021, Jonathan Wood, counsel for both the California Sea Urchin Commission and Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara, filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking to delist southern sea otters as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The crux of the petition’s argument was that otters are no longer in danger of extinction, in large part because of regulations put in place since they were listed in 1977 that reduced their potential mortality due to oil spill events. It also stated that “regulations resulting from the sea otter’s listing also interfere with sustainable harvest by exposing urchin divers to the threat of significant criminal and civil penalties should their activities disturb an otter.”
In August 2022, USFW completed a 90-day finding suggesting that delisting otters may be warranted, which prompted an in-depth, 12-month review that relied on a wide array of scientific data about their current status and future threats.
That review was published Sept. 19, and concluded that southern sea otters, which have rebounded from the brink of extinction and now number about 3,000, should remain listed as a threatened species for a host of reasons. Chief among them are climate change, which is expected to increase the otters’ exposure to harmful pathogens and algal blooms. Another key threat is shark bite mortality, which has limited the species’ ability to expand its current range to its historical range, which extended from Baja to Washington state.