What it is
The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) is a large marine otter of the North Pacific. It has no blubber and keeps warm with the densest fur of any mammal. It floats on its back to eat and often cracks shellfish open with a stone. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists it as Endangered.
Range
Shallow coastal waters of the North Pacific, from Russia and Japan through Alaska to Canada, with a separate group in central California.
What happened
Before the fur trade began in the middle of the eighteenth century, there were about 150,000 to 300,000 sea otters. Hunters killed so many that only a few thousand were left when a treaty banned the hunt in 1911. In California a colony of about 50 survived, and it had grown to more than 1,000 by 1972 and to 2,962 by 2019.
When / status
Endangered now, more than a century after the hunt was banned.
Human role
Hunting for its fur in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries nearly wiped it out.