A Time to Pause

A Time to Pause

Another one from my annual August "Humpbacks, Orcas, Sea Lions and More" aquatic mammals photo tour. I'm afraid I couldn't restrain the biologist in me when writing this commentary! No offense taken if you choose to pass on all the verbiage!

There are two elements of rarity associated with this image - a wild sea otter in British Columbia waters, and a waking sea otter doing close to nothing! Sea otters were extirpated from the entire coast of BC a little over a century ago. They were sought after for their luxuriant coats and hunted to local extinction in relatively short order. Back in 1969, 1970 and 1972 the government of Canada reintroduced a small number of otters (89) along the west coast of Vancouver Island. The reintroduction was successful, and since then the otters have expanded from the west coast of Vancouver Island over "the top" of the island to the northern side of the east coast of the island. Additionally, a small group has made it across to islands along the mainland (in and around the Goose Group). And, this past summer, a group of two sea otters were seen swimming off an Island in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), which may represent a significant range expansion to the north. There's now somewhere around 4,000 sea otters on the BC coast. But so far the otters are in reasonably remote locations and, in most cases, they REALLY don't want to be photographed - try to approach them with a camera and their heads disappear below the surface! The sea otter in this image is one of the first that showed tolerance to us - so I was thrilled to capture this shot!

I mentioned above that it was rare to observe sea otter "doing nothing". Why is this? Well, as it turns out, sea otters are absolutely unique marine mammals - they are the ONLY marine mammal that has solved the problem of how to keep their body temperature up (and constant) in the frigid and heat "sucking" water in which they live WITHOUT using a heavy layer of fat (or blubber) for insulation. Instead, sea otters pair up physical and physiological adaptations with behavioural adaptations to retain their body heat. The physical adaptation? The thickest fur coat in the animal kingdom - about 150,000 individual hair per sq. cm. (that's almost one million hairs per square inch!). This luxuriant coat is what drove the campaign to harvest their fur over a century ago.

The physiological adaptation? A metabolic rate two to three times higher than any mammal of its size (in other words - it keeps its engine roaring and hot!).

And the behavioural adaptations that help them stay warm? They almost never sit still! Why? Well...they eat 25% to 38% of their body weight (which can run as high as 45 kg - or 100 lb) in shellfish each day. Which means they're almost always hunting for shellfish. And, when not hunting, sea otters otters spend a disproportionately large amount of time grooming their coat (to ensure its natural oils and air trapped within it continue to provide an effective waterproof and insulating barrier).

So while to some this may be "just" a picture of a sea otter, when I look at it I see some very rare things - and my appreciation for this image of a "lazy" sea otter just hangin' in a kelp forest grows and grows! ;-)

Subject: Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) enjoying a rare moment of relaxation
Location:Northern Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 600mm f4 VR lens - hand-held from floating Zodiac. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/1600s @ f4; ISO 1000. -0.33 stop compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is about 85% of full image horizontally, slightly more cropped from top and bottom (equally)

As always, for more about this image (including processing details), just follow this link:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad