Aquarium of the Podcific: Sea Otters 5/2023 Transcript

1:17AM May 23, 2023

Speakers:

Aquarium of the Podcific

Megan Smylie

Erin Lundy

Madeline Walden

Keywords:

sea otters

otters

animals

aquarium

people

pup

work

food

forage

podcast

urchins

behaviors

clam

kelp

rescued

eat

live

charlie

monterey bay aquarium

marine mammals

Hi, I'm Erin Lundy.

And I'm Madeline Walden

and this is Aquarium of the Podcific.

A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific Southern California's largest aquarium.

Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation and more.

Welcome to Aquarium of the Podcific. I'm Erin Lundy, conservation coordinator for mammals and birds and animal care specialist here at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

And I'm Madeline Walden, the aquarium's digital content and community manager. Erin, have you ever hosted anything before?

Not that I know of maybe some parasites.

You never know

an unwilling host

I've been an unwilling host to probably some parasites

You've hosted some delicious dinners

True, that's a nicer take. We like that.

I have hosted a couple the majority of our TikTok lives alongside you. But I've never hosted a podcast before. And I'm technically co hosting Hello, co host

Hello co-host

But with TikTok lives, I'm so used to repeating myself 40 times in an hour. So that's going to be no repeating in a podcast setting. So I'm excited to see how this will play out.

It would make for an interesting podcast if you just repeated the same line.

You say interesting, I think frustrating mostly

it would make for a frustrating podcast

It immediatley gets turned off

Well, what do you think our audience can expect from our podcast?

Well, I'm hopeful that this will provide sort of a really nice inside look at the operations here, what goes into care of all of the diverse species that we have here. And I know that this season, we're going to be talking to a lot of different people about a lot of different species that they take care of ranging from jellies and sea stars and other invertebrates like that, to sea otters, and even some of our avian species. So it'll be a very interesting season. And it turns out the care of all those animals varies wildly because they're so different.

Tell me a little bit more about your role at the aquarium. What do you do and why did you want to start a podcast?

Yeah, I started here about five years ago, and I worked primarily as a marine mammal caretaker. And so I would provide care and training for our marine mammals. That includes our California sea lions, our harbor seals and our sea otters. And due to some experience I had before, I also got to help take care of our penguins and some of our other species as well. As I've worked here a little bit longer, my role has grown and I am weirdly very involved with our frogs now, which I know doesn't seem like the natural progression of a marine mammal career. But I was asked if I wanted to help cover our amphibian gallery when we needed a little bit of help getting that area staffed, and I really fell in love with frogs in general and really all amphibians. So between covering the amphibian gallery and still providing care for marine mammals, I also get to work on some of our conservation efforts as well. So we are recently entered into a partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium sea otter surrogacy program, and I am going to be involved with that. And that's going to be rescuing rehabilitating southern sea otters, specifically pups. And now we also have the mountain yellow legged frog initiative, which is a project that aims to headstart mountain yellow legged frog tadpoles, grow them up to frogs and release them. And between those things, it's been a very fulfilling experience to work here and to coordinate some of those efforts and find the people who are invested and interested and even be able to chase after projects that are of particular interest to the aquarium.

Yeah, we're going to talk a lot about our conservation efforts on this podcast. This season, our finale is all about the mountain yellow legged frog, so I'm excited to get into that last episode.

I'm always excited to talk tadpoles. I'm down for tadpole talks.

I texted you the other day about what your favorite animal is. And you said it's specifically larval amphibians, I believe.

What a really normal answer for someone to give? Yeah, larval amphibians, and my dog are my favorite animals.

I think mine is our sea lions. I love those guys.

No, they're pretty great. I will say that you can't train a tadpole.

I run our social media accounts, and so you can definitely see that I have a love for sea lions for how much they show up on there.

They've got a lot of personality. And I think that's something we're coming to find too is that a lot of our animals, even the unexpected ones have more personality than you think.

Definitely. Well with that, let's get into our first episode. For our first episode, we are going to talk about the most dangerous animal at the aquarium

With razor sharp teeth and a bite force that can crush a clam. These animals should strike fear in your heart. Of course today we are talking all about

sea otters.

Yes, these cuddly looking cuties are anything but they're essentially water weasels and nothings scarier than a wet weasel.

Yeah, that is always been what I said about wet results. Yeah, these animals are extremely cute, but are also very dangerous animals to be around. And it's funny because it's such a misconception, we see them portrayed as the super adorable almost like a puppy in common media. And really, they are most closely related to things like badgers, and wolverines that are known to be more aggressive than other species of animals. And it's interesting to see they have a voracious appetite. They are interesting in that way in and of themselves a super high metabolism relative to other animals. For example, if I was a sea otter, I'd have to eat about 35 pounds of food a day, just to live, which is a lot of food

You couldn't do that? Pathetic.

Probably not. And especially not seafood, which is all that they really eat that would probably make me sick to try to eat that much seafood. But every sea otter is eating about 20 to 30% of its body weight on a daily basis, which is a ton of food, and they have to spend so much time foraging around and gathering that food. And one of the things that they like to eat because they move really slow and they're easy to pick up a whole bunch. It's actually sea urchin purple sea urchins are a staple in the sea otters diet. And purple sea urchins are very common here in Southern California and along our coastal areas because they eat kelp. And so they show up wherever kelp shows up. And so apparently, sea otters can eat so many purple sea urchins over the course of their lifetime, that when they find their skeletons later, sometimes their bones are stained purple from eating all of those urchins.

That's wild.

We are going to be talking to our sea otter experts today near and dear friend of mine, and also my boss. And her name is Megan Smylie. She is our sea otter program manager and we're very excited to have her on.

Great, let's get into her interview.

Today we have the pleasure of talking to Megan Smylie, the sea otter Program Manager here at the Aquarium. She is a near and dear friend of mine and also a near and dear boss of mine. She's actually my manager because I get to work with our sea otters too. So Megan, tell us a little bit about your job.

Thanks for the intro, Erin. Thanks a lot. Hi, I'm Megan. Thanks for having me on your show today. I'm so excited to be here. I am the Sea Otter Program Manager here at the Aquarium of the Pacific. And like Erin mentioned, I get to be involved in a lot of the day to day happenings with all of our southern sea otters that live here at the Aquarium. We are recently on a rotation of young sea otters and some adult females. And so here at the Aquarium, you're going to have the opportunity to see a pretty dynamic group of animals which makes our job super fun because we get to work with lots of different aged animals, different personalities and different developmental stages. And so this is a super exciting time to be a part of the aquarium and the sea otter program. Like Erin mentioned, I get to work with the staff that work with the otters and the otters themselves, and then help coordinate with Monterey Bay Aquarium and the development of our partnership with their sea otter surrogacy program. So it's an exciting time to be involved. And I'm excited to be here.

It sounds like a lot of sea otter work. I have a question for you about the otters that we have here. Okay, we have Millie Chloe, Cooper, Ryder, and then we have an otter named 927. What is that all about?

I love it. So there are a bunch of different names. Some of them are a little more traditional names like we're used to with Ryder, Chloe, Millie, and then we have some that are just numbers. And this is such an interesting story to tell. Because all southern sea otters that you see in a zoological facility have come through the sea otter rehabilitation program up at Monterey Bay Aquarium. So, each animal is numbered. So as you can guess, number 927 is the 927th otter that has run through that program.

It's pretty cool to think to there's been almost 1000 sea otters process through that sort of rehabilitation program and the amazing work that Monterey Bay Aquarium and other institutions are doing to help out species that do rehab. I think it's really cool.

Yeah, it's a little conflicting, though, because that means that there's so many otters that have needed our help, right? Or I mean help with either our facility or Monterey Bay. So why would an otter need help? Why would an otter need to go through this program?

So these common reasons animals are stranding and getting separated from their mom is a huge one. A lot of the pups that come in are separated and at such a young age, they heavily depend on their mom for their survival. The mom is going to teach this otter pup how to forage how to groom how to socialize and really be an otter and without that mom that pup is not going to survive. And so what happens is a stranding team goes out, rescues the pup brings them in for some treatment and care and evaluates whether or not they're a good candidate for surrogacy. Surrogacy means they're pairing the otter pup up with an adult female that is going to act as a surrogate mom to that pup and usually this happens around eight weeks of age. And if that goes well, the pup is potentially eligible to be released back out into the ocean because theoretically, it's learning all of those important otter behaviors. If those interactions and that maternal bond is not formed, then more than likely that pup is not going to develop those skills and will not be able to be rereleased back into the ocean. At that point, they're deemed not releasable. And that is where the Aquarium of the Pacific and other AZA accredited facilities kind of come into play. And we build a network across the country to find homes for these animals where we can really educate people on why these animals are so important.

Yeah, sometimes they're rescued, released and then re rescued again. Yeah, and then maybe deemed non-releasable at that point. Do you have any experience with an otter that might have happened to you?

So yes, one of our sea otters that lives here, Millie, she was a standard pup and went through the surrogacy program and began to after being released began becoming a bit of a nuisance with kayakers. And so she actually got picked back up again. And due to her habituation with humans, she was deemed not releasable. So we have Millie here. Because of that reason, she did not want to leave people alone out in the ocean. And so it was no longer safe for her or people to have her there. And so now she is safely living here and has been a pseudo surrogate mom to a lot of our juvenile pups here, which is really cool.

I think it's important to note with an animal like Millie, that that habituation happened because someone out there was interacting with this animal feeding this animal. And although it might feel like you're doing a nice thing for a wild animal to provide them a snack, what you're doing is really getting them used to being around people. And that can be super dangerous, both for the animal that might learn to approach boats and maybe get hit by a boat propeller, or for people who aren't carrying a bunch of clams and are just out, you know, paddleboarding. And a sea otter jumps up. And they're not small. People always think, Oh, they're like, small and cute. They're like 70 pounds sometimes,

It's jarring how large they are.

Right?

And they're fast.

Yeah, fast. Speedy.

Bite force,

very smart.

And if you are kayaking without a bucket full of clams to offer a sea otter than what are you even...I'm just kidding around. But yeah, I mean, they certainly get habituated because people approach them. And people might not know, but it's actually illegal to approach sea otters because they are a protected species under the Endangered Species Act. And the reason for that is also people. So really, we've been their main problem.

Can we get into a little bit about why they are a part of that act to begin with what happened, why are they endangered?

What happened?

So back in the 1700s, the settlers of the area began hunting these animals for their fur, their fur is this incredibly soft, insulating tool that people used for survival skills, but then once it became more of an iconic fashion item, it was still very functional, but it nearly wiped out their entire population. Just to give kind of a rough estimate. There used to be hundreds of 1000s of orders along our entire west coast of the North American continent. And during the fur treaty, or the fur trade, the numbers fell down dramatically down to about 2000. In some areas, only 50. So the otters that you see today, that are along the central coast of California started from in about the 1900s. From about 50 otters. That was all that was left after being hunted to almost extinction. And so they are still listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And it is they still need our help they still need our protection. We got them into this mess, and it's our job to keep them safe.

So besides being very cute and very charismatic animals, why is it important for these animals to be in these ecosystems? Why are they important to protect?

So sea otters are a keystone species here in California, they live off of our shallow coastal waters. Most of the time people associate them with kelp forests, but they also live in estuaries and eelgrass beds. And these animals are important because in their environment, if you remove them, other parts of the food chain start to go unbalanced. And we see that a lot people hear always about urchin barrens and that is when urchins take over they're feeding on kelp and the holdfast of the kelp so for those of you that are unaware the holdfast is the essentially the roots of the kelp that hold onto rocks and anchor them to the bottom. So if the urchin eats that anchor, the rest of the kelp just floats away. Eventually, unchecked the urchins can wipe out entire kelp forests which are incredibly biodiverse but they also help sequester carbon from the atmosphere. And so these kelp forests are really important, but the seagrass beds are also important, because they are also sequestering carbon and they act as a natural filter between some of the terrestrial ecosystems and the marine ecosystems. And so sea otters in these environments are really helping keep the predators of kelp and the predators of eelgrass or seagrass in check, and when you remove the otters, those predators get to flourish, and eventually those plants go away.

So sea otters are essentially protecting the biodiversity of these ecosystems. They are stopping climate change, they're sequestering carbon or filtering the water that comes down that is runoff from people and other things and pollutants from ending up in the ocean. So really, I think, save sea otters, then we save the world probably.

We need shirts.

Yeah, we do need shirts for sure.

Save our sea otters, save the earth. Well, we do have some otters here. And although they do play a role in the sea otter surrogacy program, our adult females certainly will be potential surrogate moms down the line, depending on how well they do with those pups and things like that and different factors. We do have to take care of them day to day and they are pretty high maintenance relatively animals, do you want tell us a little bit about what it's like to a day in the life of caring for a sea otter.

in the Life of caring for a car. If I had to summarize it, I would say round the clock,

Literally.

And that's super cool because really what we're doing is providing care that fits their physiology. And so sea otters are incredible animals because not only do they have that super cool fur that keeps them perfectly insulated in their environment, but they also have a really high metabolism. And they need food and calorie intake almost around the clock because they're dependent on that to keep their bodies warm. And so we are working from 6am until around 11 o'clock at night. Right now, depending on the needs of the animals, it might even go as late as 2am. And really what we're doing is offering food to them every few hours. And this allows them to utilize that metabolic furnace to keep warm, lots of time of our day is spent prepping food for them. So food prep happens quite a bit, we are constantly prepping this really high quality restaurant quality food for them. And just to give a little perspective, sea otters are averaging about 25% of their body weight a day. Depending on the age of the animal, it might be higher than that or lower than that. But an average safe average is about 25% of their body weight a day. Right now I believe Millie is about 55 pounds. And so she's eating a lot of food every da, and that's just one of our six animals right now.

There's a lot of otters here.

So a lot of a lot of food. So it's a lot of food prep, a lot of cleaning, because what goes in does come out. Lots of cleaning, and just long hours getting to observe their behavior, which is super cool.

I think something that our program does that I really like is that we kind of balance training our sea otters to participate in husbandry type behaviors, but also allowing them to forage and do naturalistic things like putting food in like food, toys and enrichment. And what when sea otters typically do when they're out in the ocean, like what is how are they foraging? What are they typically finding, and how do they eat those things?

I love that question. So out in the ocean, the natural way a sea otter is going to forage is going to be resting at the surface deciding they're ready for some foods

Snacks

diving, diving down to the bottom, potentially using some tools to pry things off the bottom, but really, they're just going down to forage and that word you're gonna hear us use all the time, but they're gonna go find they're gonna go look for what they can find, and anything that's edible down there that they recognize as prey, and they want good snacks and a lot of them and so you're gonna see them leave that surface of the ocean, dive down, swim around whatever environment that they're living in and gathering as much food on one dive as possible. And they have this cool place on their body, we call it the pocket, but really it's like a big extra flap of skin near their armpit. It's that's kind of an odd way to describe it for those of you that have never seen a sea otter sea otters have very loose skin in

and a lot of it

a lot of actually not an extra flap but it's kind of like a baggy part of your sleeve where you could shove things in there and hold on to it and so they're gonna gather as much as they can on one dive come to the surface, break it all open and feast. And so when we're feeding here at the Aquarium if we are not doing a training session we are trying to mimic that the best way we can. You're gonna see food toys if you have pets at home many of you have seen Kong toys filled with food and we throw them in and then otters have to go forage for their food, we'll make Frozen toys where we have to, they have to spend a little more time breaking them apart to try to get their food out. And when they're not on exhibit, they do actually get hard shelled items that are crabs, mussels, clams, a whole bunch of different options that they get to practice eating their naturalistic food which is super cool.

And I think one of my favorite things is that people are like, Oh, they have to work for it. You know, that's so upsetting. And our otters a lot of times are preferentially choosing to go for the enrichment that mimics those natural behaviors, they love to smash stuff on rocks, they love to bite through a crab shell like they live for that. And so it's funny to see because you can put a handful of just loose shrimps down and then you can throw some in the bottom of the pool and they will go and dive for those food items because foraging is really reinforcing for them, they find those natural behaviors to be reinforcing. So that's something

I wish I had a built in pocket,

like a shopping bag,

like a cup of chips and like some apple slice,

I would not eat chips from your armpit.

No would be very personal, it'd be just for me. Oh, I wouldn't offer them to you anyway. They're not for you.

To be honest, the otters don't really share very often.

Exactly.

I have a question about their pocket. Okay, what is the weirdest thing you've ever seen an otter put in their pocket and hold in their pocket?

When you said that I instantly thought of six different things. And I can't decide which one is the weirdeset

Never a dull moment working with sea otters.

All six things, they're probably all in there at the same time. Knowing Chloe, Chloe's got some deep pockets.

Chloe really does, Chloe has the deepest pockets of all the otters. When Chloe and Millie were doing when when their life was structured, slightly different, we did a lot more training with them. They used to take a vitamin syringe, and we had some otters that thought it was really fun to steal the vitamin. I have seen that in a pocket.

And to clarify that's not a needle, it's not syringe with a needle. It's

just a plastic thing

It's like something you would give your medicine for a kid, except giant?

So anybody that has kids that has had to administer a oral medication to your infant, you have a tiny little syringe that has a little plunger on it. And that is essentially what we have for the otters. So it cannot actually hurt them in any way. But it has been a source of many entertaining moments.

It's hard to otter-proof things you can't really they're like the strongest two year olds you've ever seen in your life running around all time and breaking stuff.

So game of Otter proof what kind of toys do you have to accumulate for their enrichment? Oh, man, it's like extra extra strength, tough chewers,

Extra strength extra tough man, they they are some of the most destructive animals I've ever encountered. And so we always have this standard of is it otter-proof. And we're still defining that every day,

they prove us wrong

It needs to be tough that they can't shred it. Because believe it or not, they're very strong with just using their paws. And then when you factor in those powerful jaws, it's it's even more impressive. And so they have the ability to rip things apart very quickly, they can chew through if they can bite through a whole clam, a rubber toy is nothing. And so really, it's just making sure that they can address anything that they're not supposed to tightening all bolts, screws and

making sure they're there every time we dive in that habitat

Anything that they can take apart, they can and they will and so a lot of it is just checking to make sure things are where we left them.

I have seen an otter take a frozen class fully frozen through clam and just twist it open with just the bare little hands. I'm like how'd you do that? Did you do that seem so crazy?

Teach me

Crazy strong

Amazing. They're amazing animals.

Well, when we are training them, what types of behaviors would we typically work on? What facilitates good health care for a sea otter?

Good question. So right now what we are prioritizing with our otters are the basics for their health care, everything beyond that, we want to just prioritize their food and natural foraging habits. So some of the most important behaviors are going on to a scale so we can manage their weights, some of that includes going into a kennel so that we can move them. Because we've had such a dynamic population over the last two years, we've needed to move them around because of various social situations. And so having them be able to kennel voluntarily has been great. We have a net behavior that we were working on and have completed with some of the animals and then some of the juveniles have just not been exposed yet. But what they do with this net behavior is just another mechanism to transport them. And really, you present the net they crawl into it and it allows us to carry them to wherever we need them to go. And it's quite handy, especially when working with them for their physicals because they do get constant medical care under close watch of our veterinary staff, which was great. So,

yeah, they are scheduled for an annual physical typically. And then if anything is odd, we'll do another examination on them. And when we do a physical for a sea otter, what's that like? We had one today actually

Yes we sure did. And another one tomorrow.

Great

Otter physicals are always kind of entertaining. The number one goal for anything working with the otters like we've mentioned before is safety, safety, safety, safety, safety for the animals safety for the people. And so we meet every single time beforehand, we review the plan and then assign out roles and sometimes that is just asking them into the kennel and then using the net to anesthetize them. With the help of our vet staff, sometimes that is dropping a pool and scooping them out with the net. And that's always entertaining. It's a little a little more chaos than the other alternative. But sometimes what we need to do, especially with the little guys, because they don't have the training background yet and that is okay. But again, the safety slow and smooth and watching out for the bitey end.

And they we typically do those exams under sedation anyway, and that is the safest for the staff for the veterinarian for the otter as well. And that allows us to get the super close look at our sea otters eyes teeth paws. They don't sit still, if they're awake,

They would not let you get that close, right?

You can certainly look in their mouths and like look at their paws. But if you needed to draw blood from a sea otter or do some of those things, it's just a little easier if they're sedated. It seems like they respond really, really well to sedation and reversal of sedation. So really easy animal to manage relative to some of our pinnipeds, which are a little bit harder to anesthetize in that way, right?

Yeah, we have a couple of TikToks too that kind of goes through an annual exam with the sea otter and so it's very cute to see them just resting

and the little ice packs.

The little ice packs they get to hold. It's adorable. We'll link those in the show notes.

Definitely check out those videos. It's worth a watch. If you want to know what I thought her procedure looks like. It's, it's right there on our TikTok

And you people can watch them at the Molina Animal Care Center, which I love.

I think that's so cool.

That's one of my favorite things that we do here at the Aquarium is there's so much transparency in the healthcare and you can watch examinations, you can see our veterinarians doing even some surgeries, we've seen that. And certainly there is a little sign that tells you what's going on in case you're squeamish, just read it. And if it's a surgery, and you don't want to watch that you have the option to not, but we even have overhead cameras, we have different views. It's pretty neat.

It's really great. You can see that health care in action, and you know what your ticket purchases, go and support all those efforts. So we're so thankful and it's great to see it on display

As it relates to health care, we can also talk a little bit about their diet and you said that they receive vitamins. How do you give a vitamin to a sea otter

right now what we are doing is making a clam smoothie. Take notes for any of you that like smoothies or breakfast.

They have the ratio

we do three to five pounds of clam in a bunch of water in a blender, blend it up. So it's a nice

A bisque.

Yes, it's a perfect texture description. Frozen clam bisque

Mmmm, my favorite.

And what we do is we ration out the appropriate vitamin supplements for the animals and we freeze that little cube, it's actually quite entertaining for us because we have fun ice molds that are in all different shapes. And we get to add a little animal care specialist enrichment to us to our day, and then we freeze it and then just toss it to the otters and they eat it like a little popsicle. And just like all other food types, they all have their preferences for certain things. And most of them take it pretty readily. And what's nice is we are consistently giving them a vitamin and it's easy. It's safe for everybody. And we know that they're getting what they need.

Typically, sea otters live about 12 to 15 years and their natural habitat but we have seen them live a little bit longer under human care, thanks to probably all of the nutrition dietary supplementation and veterinary exams. And when we've had our charter otters we had Brooke and Charlie and Maggie who had been here forever. They had been here since the aquarium opened. I don't know about Maggie...

Maggie wasn't charter but Brooke and Charlie were

And we had some otters that were in their 20s at a certain point .What did management of a geriatric sea otter look like versus sort of day to day normal care for a normal aged sea otter?

Just like people as animals age and specifically sea otters age, they start to experience some eye health challenges. They start to experience mobility challenges

Just like us.

Yeah, they go gray

I'm already having all those problems

You're too young Erin!

With our geriatric otters, we would just evaluate them to see what their needs were and make adjustments based on that. So for mobility challenges, there's areas in the habitat that are easier for them to get out of the water so we would elect to take them there if we needed them out of the water. And for sight issues, that's pretty common for us to deal with a lot of it is just rearranging some of our cues that we give them and directing those more to auditory cues instead of visual cues. And then Charlie especially started to lose his hearing and so much like a deaf, a deaf dog, if you had a pet that lost their hearing, you could do a lot of tapping and they could feel the vibrations and they would be able to follow you that way. So sweet, sweet Charlie. We wanted to accommodate anything and everything that we could to make sure that he was as comfortable as he could be. In addition to that, they did receive some joint supplements like you would see with, again, pets at home, similar similar things. And so lots of discussions with our vet staffs lots of adaptations in how we manage them and really just working to make sure they have a comfy golden years.

Charlie was the cutest, we were able to celebrate his 22nd birthday here at the Aquarium before he passed. And we made all these like clam cupcakes and like all these crazy ice treats, and we just had him out there by himself. And I just remember what a sentimental moment that was for us to. He was very old. 22 is like, record breaking

You essentially doubled his lifespan, right?

And he was out there eating all the treats by himself. It was it was one of the cutest days.

My favorite thing about Charlie is he would suck on his paw in the habitat right? It was so sweet.

Swim and rest and suck on his paw.

He was a big cutie. Really gentle for a male southern sea otter too

Not usually the case, right?

No, don't go up to them

But Charlie was special Charlie's a really special guy. Okay, well, I think what we're gonna do now is switch over to some questions that social media wants to know about sea otters. First and foremost, do the sea otters have their own personalities? And if so, who is the most mischievous? Oh?

Well, yes, they all have their own personalities. And I know that, typically, in the animal training world that had been frowned upon is, is putting human emotions and feelings on animals. But the more and more cognitive research that comes out, you learn that there are actual personalities to these animals, which is amazing. And so yes, they all have their own personalities, the most mischievous. It depends on what...

Depends on the day

And definitely the day. Oh, man. I mean, for those of you that are longtime AOP Aquarium of the Pacific fans, you remember Ollie, I worked with Ollie when she was not even a year old yet. And she was hands down the most mischievous, mischievous otter I've ever seen. In my time here, she likes to take apart everything.

She's a mechanic,

She was very mechanically inclined

She's tinkering

She's a woman in STEM.

Leave her alone, she was ahead of her time.

She was amazing. She's, she's still alive. So we're talking about here anymore. She's not physically at AOP. But she does live in another zoological facility. So she is completely fine and thriving, but does not live in AOP anymore, but all used to take apart the decking almost daily. And we would have to fish it out of the back holding space. So in that regard, Ollie takes most mischievous of all AOP history, I believe. And current otters. I don't know some of those boys on exhibit like to take things apart and wrestle with each other. They're kind of in this

They're teenage boys.

Juvenile male state. And so it's bunch of teenage boys roughhousing with each other. They all have their own little quirks and are both...they're amazing.

It's just a baseline personality trait for all of them, right? They're all mischievous. It's just built in.

Well it's just what percent mischiveious they are

depending on the day again, yeah.

Do our otters have favorite foods?

Yes.

What do they like the least of?

The majority of them do not prefer the squid that we offer. Now I will say there is one juvenile that eats squid like we've never seen,

Never seen anything like it

It is fascinating, I got to see it.

It is incredible, he's kind of a big boy and he just eats the whole thing in almost one bite

Imagine swallowing an entire squid whole. And now imagine you were 20 pounds and you're

it's impressive.

Never seen anything like it in my life

Spaghetti squid

I mean, it must be the most bang for his buck because he goes after those. That that is his favorite. So that's entertaining because most of them do not like the squid. That is their least favorite. They will eat it but it is not their favorite. A lot of them like the shrimp, most of them like clam. We offer a couple different kinds, but hands down their favorite food is anything hard shelled

Yeah

Anything with a shell on it that they can bang against the deck or against another shelled item. They want it.

That's the best, most reinforced. How do you tell her otters apart?

It's a good question. Just like with anything, the more time you spend around them, the easier it becomes. However, we have been taking in lots of juveniles that are similar age and similar size. And they have not quite developed their lighter coloration and their head and chest. And so those times sometimes it just comes down to behavior. We know that this otter behaves this way. Most of the time. I am 99% sure. It's that one.

This otter eats squid whole. We know who that is, for sure alright

Ultimately, if we ever needed to know, for example, for a medical procedure, all of the otters are, they have a small scanner inside of their body, that's an implant for when they were first rescued. And we have the ability to read that via a PIT tag reader

I don't think I knew that

That that identifies their number

They're microchipped

They're microchipped,

All of them. Left inguinal area, a little microchip

That is very helpful for those unknown times

Little babies, little babies everywhere. Do you ever get over how cute the sea otters are?

I would like to say yes, but that's not honest.

That would be dishonest.

That would be dishonest. So no, you really don't. There's not a whole lot cuter in the world than a tiny baby otter, or a sleeping otter. The one of the cutest things that they will ever do, I think, is when they fall asleep in the water. And their body is completely covered in fur with the exception of the pads of their paws and their noses. And when they're sleeping in the water, they don't want to put those potty parts in the water. So they hold their hands out of the water. And then they'll roll over and it is

they do the big stretch,

The big stretch,

stretch in the water.

That's the cutest thing you'll ever see.

I agree with you. And that is probably the cutest thing. And every time without fail, no matter how long you've worked with sea otters, you see that and you go "OoOh big stretch!!" like just like when you own a dog. So we talked a little bit about how they sleep, they sleep sleeping at the surface. And they could float which is really cool because their coat is full of air. So that was one of the questions that we had. Another question that a listener wanted to know is can sea otters breathe underwater?

They cannot breathe underwater. So sea otters are mammals, just like people. So they're actually gonna hold their breath. So they're gonna be at the surface, take a nice big deep breath and then dive underwater. And it's kind of cool. For those of you that have not seen it, they when they dive underwater, there's bubbles that come out of their coat. And so maybe some people might think that's them breathing underwater, but no, in fact, they are not doing that. That's just the air getting pushed out from some of the layers of their hair, or their fur. Excuse me.

Very cool. Well, I think that about wraps up our listener questions or social media questions, except for someone wanted to know if they wanted to pursue a career very similar to yours, what do you recommend doing? How how can people be you?

Oh, that's a great question. So most of the people in our field in our industry are going to have some type of college degree, I would say follow what you're passionate about in college, because maybe you'll change your mind once you get into the career and you want to have something to fall back on. So a college degree is highly recommended. But also getting as much animal experience as you can, whether it's volunteering at your local dog and cat shelters, depending on where you live, you know, horse rescues or marine mammal rescues again, depending on where you're listening from, that's going to have to be tailored to you. And just getting animal experience is super, super important. And learning as much as you can about the ocean and specific animals. Volunteer opportunities are incredible. So reach out to local organizations. Here at the aquarium, we have a very robust volunteer program. Some of them are people that work with animals, but almost any department here you can volunteer at. And so a lot of other facilities across the country and across the world utilize volunteer so I would recommend getting involved in any way that you can. And the more experience you can gain, the better you are to get a job in the field.

Very cool. I think I always like to tell people that all it seems very glamorous because I get to see us feeding the marine mammals and doing training and working with the sea otter and that is really cool. That's like 1% of our job. And then you got 99% of smelling bad and sorting through fish, cleaning poop, and that is the life of taking care of animals. And so I think seeing if it's a good fit for you also important.

Yes. Erin, you kind of flipped on that you were thinking that when you started your career, you wanted to work more on the veterinary side, right? And then what changed?

Well, I got into an internship that was working hands on with marine mammals because I was interested in getting some experience prior to veterinary school. And as it turns out, I really liked that you could sort of be this ambassador from the veterinarian to the animal to have to have this conversation with the animal of like, Listen, you need an eye drop, you've got an eye infection, how do you tell an essentially wild animal that it needs eyedrops them to hold its eye out of the water for that amount of time that the medicine can work? And I liked that you were sort of liaising with the animal like, okay vet, here's the treatment plan, here's the critter, and we got to train them, and we have to get them comfortable. And they are so smart, and they're so able to participate in their health care. And if these animals are non releasable, and there's nowhere else for them to go, why not make their life as good and as comfortable as possible and voluntarily participating in health care behaviors, and, you know, preventing that from being a stressful experience for these animals really inspired me. And so becoming an animal trainer and getting into sort of the husbandry side of things so that I could directly provide the level of care that I wanted to see these animals have. And now working for an institution that I feel truly does provide that level of care that I think these animals deserve. It's really, that's what motivated me to get into this. Thank you, Megan, for joining us. And I hope everyone learned a lot about sea otters.

I know I did!

Thank you so much for having me, it was my pleasure. I'm so honored to be the first AOP podcast guest. That is amazing.

Well, thanks again, and we'll just wrap it up.

BYE!

Aquarium of the Podcific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In 2023, the Aquarium celebrates 25 years of connecting millions of people worldwide to the beauty and wonder of our ocean planet. Head to aquariumofpacific.org to learn more about our 25th anniversary celebration. Keep up with the aquarium on social media @AquariumPacific on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

This podcast is produced by Erin Lundy, Madeline Walden, and Scott Shaw. Our music is by Andrew Reitsma and our podcast art is by Brandi Kenney. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher and Anita Valles, and our Audio Visual and Education departments, and to all of our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do. Podcific wouldn't be possible without the support of the aquarium donors, members, guests and supporters. Thanks for listening!