J 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.

 

The dock area is closed now, meaning another summer season has come to an end. I only saw otters once, but that was enough to make worthwhile all my tribulations of the past 10 months. I'm content, because I know that, wherever the otter family is living now, they are alive, and they are safe, and those are the most important things to me. And Slick still lives, and through him, the old blood line will continue.

Slick also taught me two final lessons, one of which is that a male will sometimes leave his birth area to take up permanent residence somewhere else. I'd never had firm evidence for this before, as all the males born at Trinidad in the past remained there their whole life. But now I know that a male will disperse to another area to live in proximity to a female to whom he is bonded.

Slick's also shown me that an adult male can become a full-time cohabitating member of a family group of a mother and her young. I hadn't seen this since 1983, when I was first starting to watch the otters, but back then, I wasn't quite certain about what I was seeing. Granted, I only saw Slick and his family once, but I saw enough to know that this had been going on for quite a while. And taking up permanent residence with the neighboring family really was the only satisfactory explanation for why he had apparently vanished completely from Trinidad Bay.

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Finally, I wanted to share a picture taken during what were probably my final moments of watching otters at Trinidad, just after 9PM on August 19.



There are actually two otters on the rocks at right, but they're too indistinct to be recognizable. The picture captures a typical moment, though – me, the lone watcher, seeing things that no one else can see. I'm glad I wasn't really alone that particular night, though. My friend Dan took this picture. I was so glad he was there then. At least I got to share my Happy Ending with someone else who really knows what these animals mean to me.

 

It has been almost 4 months since I last saw an otter here. For me to go that length of time without a sighting is completely without precedent. It's not simply me picking the wrong days for my sessions – no one else has reported seeing an otter in the bay during this whole time, either. The otters' den sites also show no signs of use.

Slick, in particular, is conspicuous by his absence. He was the last real resident otter at Trinidad Bay. For a while now, I've had to accept that if anything ever happened to him, that would probably be the end of it. (Mother and Pup were never more than visitors here, and I haven't seen either of them in almost half a year.) Now, I don't know if Slick's alive or dead, all I know is, he is not here, and hasn't been for some time.

So my worst fear has finally come to pass. There are no otters here anymore. Twenty-five years after I found them, the Trinidad otters are gone...

 

Yesterday I went to the pier for the first time in 10 days. I've never gone that long between sessions since 1985, other than when I've been out of town.

I didn't stay away because I was sick or because of the weather. I haven't been going because I've been depressed. Depressed about the failure of my life in general, and about my failure with the otters in particular.

What failure is that? For over a year-and-a-half, I've been taking time off from working ostensibly to write my book about the otters – the book (or series of books) I should have been writing for the last 10-15 years. Yet in all this time, I haven't written a single word. I can work on/write about almost any other subject, but when it comes to my otters, I become mute.

I've never been able to understand why I can't write about the otters. They've been the center of my personal world for a quarter of a century – my one true driving passion in life. That should make them the easiest subject to write about, but it's completely the opposite. It almost feels like there's a physical barrier in my mind that prevents me from telling their story. Even making brief entries in this journal is like pulling teeth sometimes. I just don't understand this block; I never have. The otters are the one thing I know best, yet they're always the hardest thing for me to write about.

In times past, I've viewed myself as the instrument through which the otters would have their story told to the world. This instrument is unsurpassed in certain of its characteristics. No one is better at observing the otters and analyzing their behavior than I am. But the instrument has a critical defect: it has no output function. None whatsoever. It can't write, it can't print, it can't publish. The instrument is therefore worthless. I am therefore worthless...

So I'm afraid now that it's not going to happen. I will never write my book. The only way it will happen is if I can get help and support - emotional support, and economic support, but I have neither. Of the two, the economic need is probably the more immediate. I've been taking time away from my job to give me time to work, but that leaves me with enormous economic uncertainty, and without monetary security, I simply can't concentrate on my work. It's a perfect Catch-22. If I could just get an advance of some sort from some book publisher, that would give me both financial stability and the encouragement to work. If I knew that someone, anyone other than me wanted the book to be written, that would make all the difference in the world.

But I don't see any of that happening. So I'm afraid my depression, and my stagnation, will never see an end...

 

The pier crew started installing the floating docks on the 20th of last month. Typically, within a day or two after the first dock appears, I start seeing signs of otter activity on it. This year, though, it took a week before I found a single scat, then on successive visits, there was a second scat, then a third - suggesting that only 1 otter was depositing them. That last scat appeared one week ago today. Since then, I have seen no signs of any otter activity at all. The otters' paths and rubbing areas are all revegetating now, too, indicating they've fallen into disuse.

Late Spring is usually the beginning of high season for otter watching, but this year, for whatever reason(s), there are currently no otters here to watch...

 

With the death of Scoots and the end of Old Mama's maternal lineage, 2006 was a truly calamitous year; the worst since 1992, when all three resident adult females died. In terms of actual otter sightings, though, 2006 was absolutely THE worst year since my formal sessions began 21 summers ago. Out of 248 session, I saw otters only 77 times...

 

I know I haven't updated for a while. Not very much to report, really. On the 3rd, I saw an otter for the first time in a month. That's not to say otters haven't been here. I only go to Trinidad every third day now, you see; my opportunities to observe them have been cut by 2/3, so it's no wonder. Anyway, it was Mystery Male the other day, on his own (as usual).

As MM swam by the pier, some piece-of-shit recreational fishermen deliberately tried to catch him with their baited fishing hooks. They weren't locals, of course - it's never anyone in Trinidad who tries to hurt the otters, it's always some stranger who doesn't know that we actually like having the otters here. It's especially troubling to me to see this kind of thing now because we only have two resident otters remaining! I really wish the pier's owners would ban recreational fishing here. The tiny number of people who fish off the pier contribute nothing of substance to the local economy, and what's more, there's no fish to be caught there anyway. No one who's local fishes there. The place is a joke. Everybody here knows that.

That evening before the attempted hooking, however, I had hiked up Trinidad Head to take some panoramic pictures of the bay. Prisoner Rock (foreground) only sees the twilight during this time of year, and I wanted to get a nice picture of that. Fortunately the sunset was truly golden. Trinidad Bay is always beautiful, but this particular evening was exceptional. This is a view of the entire bay, from the town of Trinidad on the left, to Camel Rock and Moonstone Beach at far right:




Off to Trinidad now...

 

One day back in 1990, when I was in graduate school, I found this taped to my office door by one of my zoology peers. It was–and still is–so true!

 

I saw my very first wild otter 24 years ago today.

It wasn't at Trinidad, though. It was in Redwood National Park, on Redwood Creek, near its junction with Hayes Creek. I was camping out with Kent Reeves, a wildlife biologist from Humboldt State University, who had radio-tagged a young otter and was following the otter's daily movements. Close to sunset, I turned on Kent's radio telemetry gear and got a signal that the otter was nearby. We rushed to creekside in time to see something swimming upstream towards us. About 50 feet west of where we were standing, the otter hauled out onto a gravel bar and proceeded to take a shortcut through the willows. To my astonishment, Frederick (the name Kent gave the otter pup) trotted straight toward us. Literally 6 feet away, he suddenly saw us and stopped dead in his tracks. Frederick looked up at me, and for the first time, I gazed straight into the eyes of a wild otter. Realizing we were in his way, the young otter simply did an end-around and continued his trek upstream. For me, that first encounter was pure magic.

Unfortunately, as Frederick walked by us, we could see that the incision made in his side for the telemetry implant had opened up. Kent feared the wound was mortal, and he was right. Frederick died just two days later. Kent asked if I wanted to view the necropsy, but I declined. I wanted to remember Frederick alive, not as a carcass laid open for scientific purposes.

Since that day, I've seen wild otters 4,713 more times - probably more than anyone else who's ever lived. And over all those years, it's been more or less the same story repeated. Tremendous elation followed by eventual tragedy. But, like Frederick, I prefer to dwell on the lives of my otters rather than their deaths. On balance, I have known far more joy than sorrow during my long lutrine quest.

 

No update for a while. Nothing to update, really. I've seen otters only 7 times this month, but only once have I seen one in person. The rest of my sightings have been via the webcam, and the last time I saw an otter on the webcam was a week ago today...

My acceptance of the changes here has not brought me closer to any kind of consolation or resolution. Quite the contrary, my sadness and feeling of emptiness are increasing day-by-otterless-day. I feel lost. There's no center to my life anymore. That pier was my church where I went daily for personal edification and spiritual renewal, and those otters were my teachers, but my church is empty now. Attendance has become a meaningless ritual. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to justify going there at all.

I feel pretty much the same about updating this journal. All I'm doing is depressing its readers, and I don't want to keep doing that. Best to just go silent, I think. All of the happy times are in the past. The present and future here hold nothing worthwhile for anyone anymore.