Sea Otter Genomes from Japan to Baja California

Join San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Sea Otter Savvy on September 28th at 5PM (PDT) for a unique Sea Otter Awareness Week event! Dr. Annabel Beichman will be presenting on sea otter genomics and lost populations in this We Were Here sea otter program special feature. Sea otters are one of the most recently evolved marine mammals.

They have evolved many special characteristics to survive life in the ocean, including the densest fur of any species, which keeps them warm in frigid waters. Tragically, this remarkable adaptation nearly led to sea otters’ extinction at the hands of the maritime fur trade in the 18th-19th centuries.

Thanks to concerted conservation efforts, sea otters have begun to rebound across parts of their original range, but are still missing from many places where they used to thrive, particularly along the coastline that used to connect southern sea otters in California to northern sea otters in Alaska. Dr. Beichman will be telling us about how signals of sea otters’ evolution to the marine realm and the scars of the fur trade can be detected in their genetic code.

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