It was 40 years ago today that I first set foot on Trinidad pier: a then-inconsequential event that ultimately changed the entire future course of my life.

From 1980-1982, I published a national newsletter that focused on the conservation of river otters. I wanted to write an article about otters in California, and the only person studying them at the time was a grad student at Humboldt State University. I'd actually met Kent Reeves at a research workshop in Florida two years before, so when I wrote and asked him if I could interview him for this article I was planning, he said come on up!

Kent of course had hoped to show me some otters during my stay, but when we visited his study site on Redwood Creek, none were to be found. On our way back, though, he made a side trip to Trinidad. He told me he hadn't seen otters here, himself, but several people told him they had, so let's give it a try. We drove through town and ended up at this fishing pier, and I thought to myself, this guy's crazy – this is the ocean – there won't be any river otters out here. (Shows you how much I knew about otters back then.) We stood and stared at nothing in the freezing cold wind for about 15 whole minutes before I told Kent I wanted to go. Big waste of time, or so I thought.

Anyway, at the end of my visit, I expressed disappointment that I didn't get to see any wild otters, but Kent said all that means is you'll have to come back this summer and we'll camp out on Redwood Creek and we'll see otters then for sure! I did, and we did! Long story short, only 16 months later, I was living in Humboldt, myself, and saw my first otter at Trinidad on June 6, 1983. Wound up studying wild otters and freezing my ass off in the wind here for 25 more years, so in the end, who was the crazy one? ;)

 

If you would like to contact me with regard to any of my postings here, please email me at otterinfo at gmail dot com. Thank you for your interest!

-Scott Shannon

 

After studying the behavior of the river otters of Trinidad Bay, California, for a quarter of a century, I saw my last otter there ten years ago today.

I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "It doesn't seem that long ago," but it really does feel as though it's been much longer than a decade. Seems more like a lifetime has passed since then, actually...

It ended so spectacularly badly, is it any wonder I've shoved it all to the back of my mind? It was literally a lutrine Shakespearean tragedy: treachery layered upon treachery, murder after murder of innocents, and in the end, all of the players – heroine and villainesses alike – died. Only I – the audience of the generations-long performance – was spared death, leaving the theatre haunted by a Cassandra-like story that no one else could possibly believe.

Occasionally, someone will say to me, "You should write a book about the otters." I always shake my head no. Why? Because I know it would be a wasted effort. Witness: my otter website – which does tell at least the happy parts of the story – gets almost no traffic, despite it having been online for seventeen years. My email address is on every page, but can you guess how many emails I've gotten this past year inquiring about my study, which was the longest and most thorough of its kind in the history of science? ZERO, down from a grand total of two emails the year before.

So why should I write a book on a subject that is obviously of no interest to anyone? I already feel like I threw away twenty-five years of my life for nothing. No. I will not waste any more of whatever time I may still have left, and furthermore, mostly for the otters' sake, I intend to take all of their dark, dirty secrets to my grave.

 

I suppose I should go to Trinidad tomorrow for the 30th anniversary of my first seeing otters there. My heart really isn't in it, though. Everything I knew and loved there is gone, even the old fishing pier itself. Otters haven't been a part of my life for over 5 years now. Can it be true? I never imagined that could happen; that it would all end like that. But it did, and there's no going back. So maybe I won't go tomorrow after all. There's nothing to celebrate anymore – only losses to mourn.

 

I saw a family of 6 otters this evening! Here's a short video of 5 of them swimming toward the pier:



That's the elder matriarch at front left, an adult daughter at her side, and three pups of the year behind the females. (I don't know if they are all the old mother's or a combining of two females' litters.) The sixth individual was Slick, who had already come over to the pier by himself about a minute earlier. :3

 

This otter almost looks like something out of the Pliocene to me. It's good news, anyway! :3



Click for the story.

 

Pictures of a true albino otter in the North of Scotland.






Photos by Karen Jack.

Story here.

 

Little Mama, July 2, 2004, during the last summer of her life...


click image to enlarge

Photo by my friend Alon D. Karpovsky.

 

I saw otters at Trinidad this evening! It's been exactly one year to the day since I last saw them.

All summer long, I have been receiving reports from reliable witnesses that there was an otter family in the bay again. Unfortunately, I no longer have reliable transportation, so I have been unable to go see them myself. Despite the fact that my car was acting up as bad as ever yesterday, though, I decided to tempt fate for one evening and make the drive up to Trinidad anyway.

It was just like the old days! The minute I stepped onto the pier, I saw a family of six in a tight formation swimming over from the headland. There was a mom and three babies, plus two yearling-sized 'satellite' individuals. It looked like a typical multi-year family grouping that I've been used to seeing here since the late 1980s.

Here's a video of the family in the tide pools east of the pier, taken earlier this evening.

Watch on YouTube

Not having seen otters here for so long, the continuity of my observations has been completely disrupted, so I can only speculate who it was that I saw today. My best guess is that it was the mother I first saw in 2007, plus her three pups-of-the-year and the two yearlings born last year. All I can do is guess, though. I'm essentially just a clueless tourist here like anyone else now.

Whatever, it sure was great to see otters again! My life has hardly been worth living without them in it...