Otterly Adorable

 

A baby sea otter rides on the Pacific swells on its mother's belly to stay warm in between its mothers dives for food off Monterey Bay, California. I finally got a picture of a baby otter in nice morning light!

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Moss Landing north of Monterey is a great place to find sea otters depending on the tides. This raft of otters napped in the sun.

An otter spits out broken mussel shells. Otters eat a veritable buffet of seafood every day.

One reason people love otters might be because they relish food as much as we do. Nom nom.

A sea otter crunches through the shell of a crab while cradling a second crab and a half-eaten octopus on its chest. It took the otter longer to eat the crabs than to catch them. The crabs kept trying to escape, but there was no escape, ha. That tempura must taste pretty good! The otter dragged it around for the better part of two hours.

An otter languidly rolls in the water at a marina in Seldovia, Alaska. I took the ferry to Seldovia to find this otter napping in the sun. I couldn't photograph him from the dock because he was backlighted by the harsh sun. But when I got back from my hike, I was delighted to find the otter wide awake and ready to look for a late lunch. And he had floated to the other side of the dock where he was in perfect afternoon light. Yay!

The sea otter crunched into a crab. Look at those teeth!

A mother otter paddles away from a ferryboat while keeping her baby out of the cold water.

An otter grooms its face with both paws after a long nap. Otter fur is some of the most insulating on the planet. Each square inch contains hundreds of thousands of hairs. This little guy looked like he was washing his face!

An otter in Alaska's Kenai Fjords National Park uses a rock to crack open a sea urchin in Resurrection Bay.

A sea otter rides the big swells off California's wild coast at Point Reyes National Seashore.