Day 6, October 23, 2007

Today I'll begin by answering the questions from Waterford School and Raina. You have great questions and I'll do my best (along with checking with the scientists here) to answer them. As far as we know, Valley fever does not affect the otters here. It is caused by inhaling spores of a soil fungus. The illnesses here are mainly from toxoplasmosis (parasites from cat feces) and demoic acid poisoning caused by the toxic red tides. Toxoplasmosis can cause encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain. The symptoms are fever, seizures and weakness. Our research scientists were not aware of the polymorphus kenti worm affecting the local population. We don't know the daily rate of births, but the peak season for otter births is springtime (April and May), but pups are born all year round.
Your question about how to get involved to help otters is a great one. Two ways we came up with are:
1) Get involved with an organization such as Defenders of Wildlife. You can get on their mailing list and support their campaigns to protect the otters. Use this link:
Defenders of Wildlife
2) Help educate others about sea otters in particular and endangered species as a whole.

Now for a summary of today's activities... we went out on the boats again. I was in the boat Nereis. We travelled up the shore going north all the way around the tip of Monterey Bay and into Santa Cruz harbor. Our goal was to survey the marine mammals in general, and specifically make photo identifications of the coastal bottlenose dolphins. We caught sight of a couple of dolphins on the way north along with otters and sea lions. Finding no dolphins in the harbor we turned and headed across the bay towards south Monterey. We lucked out as we crossed the Monterey canyon, which you may recall provides a lot of nutrients through upwelling. We caught sight of two pairs of humpback whales, a harbor porpoise and a bunch of jelly fish. Once we approached the shore we headed north and ran into a large group of bottlenose dolphins feeding and travelling. There were moms and calves. We stayed around watching them and trying for photo id's. The dolphins are identified by their dorsal fin, whereas the humpbacks are identified by their flukes (tails).