Monterey Bay Aquarium has a one-of-a-kind program where adult sea otters adopt rescued sea otter pups and raise them to be released back into the wild.
But some of their most important work is behind the scenes, serving as foster moms to abandoned pups in the aquarium's one-of-a-kind program to rescue, nurture and return sea otter pups to the wild.
The aquarium started rehabilitating newborn and injured sea otters in 1984, before the aquarium even opened its doors later that same year. Everyone in the area knew to call the aquarium when they spotted abandoned or injured sea otters. Aquarium staff cared for the sea otter pups and adults, naming them, feeding them, raising the pups and restoring them to heath.While many otters survived, they got too attached to their human handlers. The first rescues hung out in the bay, expecting food from humans, bothering boaters and kayakers, unable to survive in the wild on their own.
Giving them numbers instead of names"reduces the likelihood of attaching to these developing pups or these orphaned pups as if they were pets or in other ways developing a closer association than we want," says Mayer. "We want these animals to essentially be anonymous, in the sense that ultimately we want them back out in the wild population as opposed to here in captivity."
The pups"go through a natural imprinting on the sea otter mother as opposed to on human caregivers and ultimately when they're released to the wild, they behave out in the wild like sea otters are supposed to," says Mayer.
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