Police are hunting down someone who has been inexplicably shooting sea otters in California. The otters found between Seacliff State Beach and the Santa Cruz harbor.
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The three male sea otters, two juveniles and an adult, were found dead between the Santa Cruz Harbor and Seacliff State Beach in Aptos between August 12 and 19, state officials announced Monday. “Without having a suspect it’s hard to tell if it’s a malicious person or a fisherman who is mad or someone else”. Max Schad, California Department of Fish and Wildlife Warden said that it is tough to determine if a fisherman who is mad, or if it is a malicious person, or something else to blame.
Park rangers are offering a $10,000 reward to get their hands on whoever shot and killed three endangered Southern sea otters in the Santa Cruz area.
The dead otters were reported by members of the public, and scientists at the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Centre in Santa Cruz initially had no idea they had been shot.
There are some 3,000 southern sea otters living on the California coasts – but the creatures thrived around the Pacific Rim before Russian and Japanese fur hunters almost exterminated the population in the 18th and 19th centuries. Adults can weigh between 31 and 99 pounds and are part of the weasel family. But it was not until 1938, when a surviving colony of some 50 otters were found near Big Sur, did the California population begin to turn around.
“They’re a keystone species”.
There was also a fourth body of a sea otter but is was at a high degree of decomposition. With a strong population of sea otters around, kelp forests are able to provide food in the form of drift algae for a number of other species, including commercially harvested fish and shellfish. Another sea otter, discovered more recently, may have been killed in the same manner.
The shooting deaths of the three otters are not the first time for these crimes.
The otters, all male, washed up between Santa Cruz Harbor and Seacliff State Beach in Aptos between August 12 and August 19. In 2003, a man was convicted of killing a sea otter at the Montana de Oro State Park in Morro Bay.
And, for at least the three otters, a human with a gun. They were sentenced to 75 days in jail and fine $2,000. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory is conducting an examination. The initial $10,000 reward was put forward by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the state fish and wildlife agency and a private donor.
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Anyone with information can call the CalTip line at 1-888-334-2258 or the Special Agent of the USFWS at at 650-876-9078.
