Exclusive interview with surfing sea otter

Who are you to be calling me aggressive?

Yes, I’m the 5-year-old female otter, from Santa Cruz, about whom you’ve been reading scare headlines.

Now, I do sometimes approach surfers or kayakers in ways they interpret as threatening. And, on occasion, I separate surfers from their boards and exercise my right, as a Californian, to ride the waves myself.

But have I ever done anything truly aggressive, at least by Santa Cruz standards? It’s not like I ever swiped a street parking space near the Boardwalk, or bid $200,000 over asking on a three-bedroom in Seabright.

Which is why it’s downright slanderous to say, as the city of Santa Cruz has on signs posted near the coast, that I’m an “aggressive sea otter” so dangerous that people shouldn’t go in the water. And if I could hire a lawyer, I might have a case against biased human media who call me “wayward” or a “renegade” — without ever bothering to ask me for comment.

The true aggressors in this otter’s story are all too human. And I’m not just talking about the paparazzi who paddle out to take my photo.

As of this writing, there are no confirmed cases of me hurting anyone. Still, I’m being relentlessly hunted by state officials, as if I were a dangerous fugitive.

Yes, I’ve bitten a few holes in some boards. But c’mon! Human Californians can shoplift in Union Square and smoke meth in the Tenderloin without any real fear of imprisonment.

Yet I, for spooking a few surfers, could lose my freedom. The state’s plan is to capture me (they may have succeeded by the time you read this) and relocate me to a zoo or aquarium, placing me in front of audiences with little compensation — like actors in a Netflix show.

It could get worse for me. Experts who study otters have raised the possibility that, if I’m ever accused of doing harm to a human, I’ll have to be euthanized — without a trial before a human jury, much less a panel of my fellow marine mammals.

And you thought Gov. Gavin

Newsom had put a moratorium on executions.

Of course, deadly attacks on otters are human tradition. There are only around 3,000 of us southern sea otters living off the California coast today because of mass slaughter by fur traders in previous centuries. We remain a threatened species.

So, don’t I have every reason to bite back?

I was born in captivity and returned to the wild, with a number (841) and a transmitter for monitoring. After I was reported for “aggressiveness” two years ago, state and Monterey Bay Aquarium officials yelled loudly at me to make me afraid of people. This intervention, unsurprisingly, didn’t work.

I can’t help it if I run a little hot. My metabolism requires that I eat one-quarter of my body weight each day in fish and crab and urchins. I have to eat even more when I’m pregnant. It’s also hard for me to keep warm; I don’t have blubber like those media darlings, the elephant seals.

It’s ironic that I’m in trouble for confronting surfers. Because surfers, who constantly paddle right into my ecosystem, are far more aggressive than me. Santa Cruz has a long history of surfers who defend their breaks violently, and even create gangs. But I’m the threat here?

To the contrary, I should be seen as an asset, even a model for Californians. I’m out here breeding — two pregnancies so far that anyone knows about — while the human

birth rate is dropping so fast onshore that California is losing population. My presence, and that of other sea life, is vital to the tourism that powers the Central Coast economy. I’m also an environmental steward, because I eat the sea urchins that can devour kelp forests. The same state government now hunting me has considered introducing otters along the North Coast, to make those ecosystems healthier.

Despite all we do for society, my fellow otters and I are excluded from participation in decisions in California, even as the state seeks to control me. This is primitive, and hypocritical for a state that purports to be committed to democracy and environmental justice. Efforts are underway, here and elsewhere, to create multi-species constitutions and democratic governance for important commons spaces on this planet, like the Amazon or the oceans.

As the University of Leicester politics professor Rob Garner has written, “The interests of animals are affected — often devastatingly — by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or — more specifically—their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions.”

I shouldn’t be evading state officials. I should be helping to govern them. Because the real aggression I see in California is your anthropocentrism.

Courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife An aggressive sea otter has been attacking surfers in Santa Cruz.