Sea otters: Back from the brink
Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

Sea otters aren’t just cute to look at, they also play a critical role in preserving the environment. By hunting invertebrates like clams and sea urchins, sea otters help preserve kelp forests, which in turn sequester carbon, protect coastlines and provide food and shelter for other marine life.

Their hunting prowess makes sea otters a keystone species, meaning that other aspects of the ecosystem rely on their existence. Without the sea otter, many species that shelter in the kelp forests they help protect would die. But the species has faced numerous threats, from hunting, commercial fishing and oil spills, and populations dropped to near extinction in 1911. Thanks to conservation initiatives, numbers have started to bounce back, with around 130,000 sea otters worldwide.
With the densest fur of any animal – an estimated million hairs per square inch – the sea otter’s coat keeps it warm in the frigid North Pacific Ocean. While an important adaptation, it almost proved to be the otters’ downfall, as the fur became a target for hunters during the 18th and работа а вебкаме это плохо 19th centuries.
The sea otter population dropped from between 150,000 and 300,000 in the early 1700s to an estimated 2,000 in 1911. In the same year, sea otters were afforded protection by a treaty between the US, Japan, UK and Russia, which banned sea otter hunting and enabled the populations to rebound, although they remained widely fragmented. Here, a sea otter rests on its back in the protected waters at Moss Landing, Monterey Bay, California.