We are driving into Elkhorn Slough National research reserve located near the Monterey Bay in California, with the hopes of getting a glimpse and maybe some photographs of the California sea otters.
Wow, there is a whole raft of them just back floating out there, getting some sun.
It’s no wonder a group of sea otters are called a “raft” of sea otters.
They kind of look like a floating blanket of fur, bumping into one another as they drift around.
They kind of do this spin move where they roll over a few times and then they end up right where they started floating on their backs.
Let’s find out more about the California Sea Otter so we can take, better photographs of them.
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If you didn’t know, The California sea otter is considered a keystone species and it is still on the endangered species list.
One interpretation of a keystone species means, for instances, the health of the sea otter is a good indication of the health other species in the nearby ecosystem.
Here, the sea otter eats sea urchins and other small crabs and snails that feed on the Giant Kelp.
If the sea urchins for example, go unchecked, so much of the kelp forests can be consumed, that nothing else can live there.
So, by the actions of the sea otter, it stabilizes the kelp forests to help them thrive and give a much-needed home to many other organisms.
In estuaries, like we are at, the otters keep the eelgrass healthy by consuming crabs.
This is a little convoluted but stay with me on this. The otters eat the crabs which then allows the crab’s main diet, the sea slug, to thrive.
The sea slugs are good for the eelgrass because the slugs eat the algae that builds up and coats the eelgrass.
And if the algae were to go unchecked, the eelgrass would smother from being too covered with algae.
Finally, the eelgrass is needed by many, many other fish for, hunting their food and for shelter.
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The California sea otter numbers around 3,000 and are found mostly in the central coast of California. They are having a hard time expanding their numbers in this limited area.
There is just so much food that can support families of otters.
One of the problems is that when the sea otters try to make their way north to expand their populations, they fall victim to white shark attacks along the coast of Northern California.
It sounds creepy and you can’t help but thinking of the JAWS movie with sharks thrashing around consuming all the sea otters.
So the otters seldom every travel far in the open ocean coast line so they stay where they are safe in and around Monterey bay.
A solution is being formed to possibly “transplant” some California Sea Otters to the San Francisco bay. Where they might be able to thrive in the relative safety of the bay.
Not everyone is happy about that proposal since the crab fishing industry if pretty important to the San Francisco bay, and the fisherman think that adding otters would take an unnecessary toll on the crab fishing.
This idea of transplanting is not too far-fetched as the California Sea Otter once thrived in the San Francisco bay, about 200 years ago. So, we shall see if they are given that chance to make San Francisco home again.
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As you watch the sea otters when they are feeding, they dive down to the seafloor and grab a crab or urchin. The come up to the surface and use their bellies as a table and consume their meal.
Many times, you will see them also bring up a rock to help crack open a crab or a clam to assist in cracking open their meal.
The fur of the sea otter is super thick.
The sea otter doesn’t have a layer of blubber to keep warm in these cold waters, it only has its fur.
The sea otter’s fur is considered the densest fur in the world and measures a million hairs per square inch.
As a fur comparison, the average house cat has about 600,000 hairs on its entire body!
Its because of this amazing fur that the sea otter was almost hunted to extinction. From mid 1700’s its estimated that the sea otter numbers were about 300,000. A ban on hunting them was put into effect in 1911 and now their numbers now hover around 3,000.
This substantial fur leads to lots of grooming.
When photographing them, you can almost always watch them groom themselves. The grooming helps coat the fur with natural oils and fluff it with insulating air bubbles.
Another way the sea otter stays warm in cold water is to constantly eat.
They consume about 25% of their body weight each day. Which is really quite a bit.
That’s similar to a 150-pound person eating 40 pounds of food per day.
This excessive eating is because of their very high metabolism. All this eating, and metabolism keeps their body temps at about 100 degrees – thus keeping them warm.
After the break, we will talk about how to photograph the California Sea Otter.
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Ideally when photographing sea otters, get as low as you can to the water level. They are a protected animal so you can’t get too close to them so a long lens is what you want to use.
A friend of mine made me a ground pod. It is essentially a large frying pan with a short post built into it. On that post is a threaded bolt that I can attach my Wimberley Gimbal and to that I can attach my longest lens.
This allows me to get on the ground with my gear, and look through the lens, about as low as I can get. The pan shape lets me move side to side or forward or back on something smooth like sand.
The down side is I’m lying on the ground. It helps to have some pads to lie on. I got my pads at Harbor Freight for under $10.
No matter what pads I have I still have to get up, which I guess is the price of getting down low.
A low angle will serve you well with a lot of wildlife photography. Getting down to the wildlife’s eye level is great way to give a more intimate view. Kind of like what kind of angle the wildlife sees every day.
With sea otters, you don’t have a lot of choices, since they are a protected species, so any angle should be great.
If you can get them interacting with each other that is always a plus. I like to watch just about any wildlife for a while to see what they do. Eating, grooming and sleeping are all activities that the otters are great at.
Let’s talk a little about Depth-of-Field when photographing animals like this. Since you are using a long lens, the DOF will likely be rather shallow. Meaning if you come across a raft of sea otters floating on their backs, one may be in focus and the others, in front and behind the subject will start getting soft. Possibly even the subject’s face will be in focus and his meal, resting on his belly will be out of focus.
You only have a couple of options when it comes to increasing your depth of field. One is to move your aperture to a higher number. Instead of having it at f/2.8 or f/4 try moving it to f/11. f/16 or f/22.
Having enough light is usually your battle with this sort of move, but luckily, shooting otters is a daytime activity. On an overcast day, you might have to move your ISO up a bit, but it shouldn’t be a problem.
Be aware of the trade off with aperture and shutter speed. When you make your aperture smaller (a larger number) your shutter speed will have to be slower.
Again, our subject matter, the sea otter, makes it easy on us in that they are not usually moving around too rapidly. So, you can get away with a slower shutter speed if need be.
However, you don’t want to go too low, combined with your longer focal length of your lens, that you start getting blurry images.
Remember that if you are using a 300mm – you should be shooting at least a 1/400th of a second. And that’s if you are on a sturdy tripod.
I tend to error on the side of a faster shutter speed like in the 1/1000th or faster. If you are hand-holding, then you should go with even a faster shutter speed.
Anyway, you cut it, sea otters are a blast to photograph. They are cute, furry, don’t move around too much. They involve themselves in busy activities and interact with each other. These animals are worth planning a trip around photographing them, if you happen to know where they hang out.
Monterey Bay, in California is the best place to start.
However, the same animal, can be found on the Russian east coast, British Columbia, Alaska Mexico and Japan.
With Alaska being the largest range with some 73,000 sea otters living up there.
So they are out there, so go find them and have some fun photographing them.