Late summer is peak time for sea otters (Enhydra lutris) to mate! Although sea otters can mate year round, mating is most common from July to September, especially off the coast of California. Female sea otters typically give birth to a single pup, who is dependent on her for the next 6 months. Due to the intense care sea otter moms provide for their babies, they are a marine species of super-moms! Sea otter pups learn how to swim at 4 weeks old, and learn to dive at 6 weeks old. Until then, Mom swims on her back and carries her baby everywhere on her belly. One exception is when Mom needs to dive and forage for food. To dive, she will safely wrap her pup in kelp to prevent her baby from drifting away in the waves. Then she is able to dive and forage for food nearby.

Mom, and sea otters as a whole, need to eat a lot! As one of the smallest marine mammals, sea otters do not rely on layers of heavy blubber/fat to stay warm, like whales or seals. Instead, they have a thick fur coat that traps air, creating an insulating bubble around their body. To keep that insulating bubble warm, sea otters pour a ton of energy into body heat. As a result, they need to eat at least a quarter of their own body weight every day! Sea otters feast on a variety of marine invertebrates, including urchins, clams, abalone, crabs, and snails. While foraging for food, sea otters can dive to depths of 300 feet! Additionally, sea otters utilize “tools” to open hard-shelled prey. Sea otters will position themselves on their back, with a hard-shelled prey on their belly. They will then smash a rock against the prey to crack open the shell! 

Sea otters’ voracious appetites don’t just benefit themselves; as a keystone species, their feeding habitats are essential for the existence of coastal kelp forests and seagrass beds. Sea otters protect kelp forests from urchins, who are heavy kelp grazers. When unchecked, urchins rapidly decimate entire kelp forests, leading to zones of dead “urchin barrens”. All the fish and invertebrate species that rely on kelp forests for food and habitats are also hurt by this. Sea otters are essential to controlling urchins and ensuring the kelp forests continue to exist. Additionally, sea otters munch on crabs, which indirectly boosts sea grass growth. Seagrasses are endangered by algal “epiphytes”, which grow on top of seagrass and block out sunlight. These epiphytes are grazed on by isopods and slugs, which in turn are eaten by crabs. By keeping crab populations in check, sea otters allow the grazers to remove epiphytes and promote sea grass growth! Now that you’ve learned about sea otters as both super moms and super heroes for the ocean, it’s important to help protect them! You can share with your family and friends about the importance of protecting sea otters, donate to “adopt a sea otter” campaigns, get involved with volunteer work, and much more!

As we slither into another month it comes time to celebrate another ocean-themed holiday, and August 7th marks National Sea Serpent Day! The sea serpent has been the subject of stories spanning hundreds of years across a spectrum of cultures worldwide. Some of the first myths involving the sea serpent came from Mesopotamia, where a giant, scaled, and vicious snake with horns was the goddess of the sea and named Tiamat. As the myth goes, in life Tiamat was a destructive entity but her death resulted in blossoming life that created the Earth and Heavens. There have also been serpents in Greek mythology such as Charybdis, a creature with a large, jawless mouth that opens to hundreds of pronged teeth, very similar to a sea lamprey. In the myths, Charybdis’ suction was so powerful that it could create whirlpools that could engulf whole ships. In Norse mythology the sea serpent was named Jörmungandr and was so large that its body could wrap around the entire Earth. The Norse sea serpent is commonly shown with its tail in its mouth, an ouroboros, and it is thought that the release of the serpent's tail from its mouth marks the beginning of the end of the world.

Almost every showing of a sea serpent in mythology symbolizes a duality between creation and death, a biological truth for all organisms. But are these myths based on a living creature lurking in the depths of our oceans? While lacking in horns, and the length to cover our planet, we do have a modern day sea serpent: The sea snake! The sea snake family is made up of two groups, venomous snakes in the Hydrophiidae subfamily, and sea kraits in the Laticaudinae subfamily. The sea snakes prefer tropical waters and can be found in the tropical Pacific, but are especially prevalent in the waters of APAC (Asia-Pacific). These snakes, unlike their terrestrial relatives, have special evolutionary-driven adaptations to survive long periods in the salty sea. Equipped with sensory organs to detect vibrations in the water, lungs that stretch the length of their bodies, glands that help to expel salts, and a deadly venom, sea snakes are considered top predators in their ecosystems.

Most sea snakes are not considered threatened or endangered, but that does not mean we shouldn’t pay them any mind. The sea snake’s preferred habitat is near coral reefs or island barriers. If we remember from last month’s overview of coral reef conservation, coral reefs are some of the most resilient ecosystems, but suffer greatly from climate change and warming oceans. From an ecological perspective, this could imperil our favorite sea serpents, which is another reason why reef restoration is so important! The mythology behind the sea serpent has allowed us to both appreciate the sea snakes that have been studied, and inspired us to explore our oceans from surface to seabed in search of new and mystifying discoveries.

Have you ever heard the phrase “children are our future”? Not only can this phrase be taken literally, but it can also be meant to mean that children have the power to change the future for the better! August is a time to celebrate the young people who aren’t afraid to take the future into their own hands! Many different organizations nominate Ocean Heroes like the UN, Captain Planet’s Project Hero, and the Celebration of the Sea Foundation. Notably, Oceana accepts nominations for their Ocean Heroes in until September, and you can take the pledge to become an Ocean Hero on their website.

When you think of Ocean Heroes, who do you think of? If you’ve been following the news recently, you might think of Greta Thunberg! She is a young activist from Sweden who started her activism work on a national scale when she was only 15. She started skipping school, organizing protests, and encouraging other students to do the same as a part of her School Strike for Climate Change until Sweden was in compliance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. This soon became an international movement, which spawned the creation of her school strike for climate change movement called Fridays for the Future. This organization highlights the work of other young climate activists. 

Another young Ocean Hero is Finlay Pringle– he was 10 when he first decided to take the first steps into activism by organizing his school’s climate strike. As someone who was raised near the ocean in Scotland, he has noticed the effects of climate change and harmful fishing practices and made it his mission to do something about it! He joined the Ocean Hero Bootcamp, and has become a “shark ambassador” through the organization Sea Shepherd who advocated to rid local restaurants of shark fin soup. In his own backyard he’s seen plastic pollution, coral bleaching, and the depleting of peat bogs, one of the largest carbon stores in the world. Finlay’s story is one that exemplifies taking on the issues in your local community and raising up your voice about the things that matter to you.

Another exemplary climate and ocean activist is Oluwaseyi Moejoh from Lagos, Nigeria. In 2018 she began a recycling initiative in her local community to try and mitigate the effects of the poor waste management systems she saw in her community. This poor waste management showed itself by clogged drains and polluted shorelines, all things that caused the spread of malaria and unsafe drinking water in her community. The goal of her initiative is to “protect and preserve oceans, vulnerable communities, the planet, biodiversity, and humans from the perils of the plastic pollution and climate change crisis.” She believes that the key to fixing the climate crisis is to recycle, something actionable and easy to implement in your own community!