Thursday, May 23, 2013

Curious sea otter

On this week's walk through Near Island, we ran into a sea otter who seemed as interested in us as we were in him.

We were on the north point of the island...and do mean the point, because this spot is so thin that it allows only 2 persons to stand side by side on a rock as you look north to the channel.
He came from the west, the city side. Then he rounded the point and went on the east side of the island towards Long Island, continuously coming out of the water to check us out. When we are on a kayak, they keep much further away.

Looked kind of skinny to us, but that's probably because his summer food crop has not yet developed.

Here he is when he first spotted us:



He must have felt comfortable enough to relax and swim around on his back.


But, then he decided it was a good idea to check again, and see if were a threat.


No, we looked harmless there on shore.
So he just slowly rounded the point we were standing at,
coming back up to look at us every few minutes, 
and went all 270 degrees form southwest to southeast of us.

Sorry, the You Tube video won't load directly, so go to this link or copy and paste this address to your search engine to see him swimming around us on a 1 minute 40 second video.:

http://youtu.be/q8ki3PLh4s4


Incidentally, in the past, people have asked us why we never photograph their "raft", or groups of otters that travel together.

Well, in Kodiak we see them individually, not in groups. We've never seen a "raft". Don't know why. But that's just the way it is here .
.

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