A bounty on sea otters? Bill proposes $100 per otter

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

A Republican from Sitka filed a bill proposing to place a $100 bounty on sea otters, a population deemed so out of control it could be responsible for millions of dollars lost to the seafood industry.
Sen. Bert Stedman sponsored Senate Bill 60, which if passed, would be be used as a management tool. The bill had its first hearing Wednesday in Juneau. The bill would impact other parts of Alaska as well, like Kachemak Bay where a healthy otter population thrives.
The senator writes in his sponsor statement that in Southeast Alaska, the growing sea otter population is devastating the shellfish biomass.
“Sea otters are the only marine mammals without blubber. As a result, the animals have a high metabolism and require large amounts of food to survive,” it states.
A sea otter rests with her pup in Kachemak Bay
As justification, the focus is on the voracious appetites possessed by otters. The sponsor statement inventories the otter diet as consisting mainly of crabs, clams, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, shrimp and abalone. Sea otters can consume up to 25 percent of their body weight per day. One male otter can consume up to 7,300 pounds of food per year.
As of 2012, it is estimated that there are 21,500 sea otters in Southeast Alaska, up significantly from previous years. Using an average body weight of 65 pounds and a daily food intake of 25 percent of body weight, a sea otter population of 21,500 animals will consume over 127 million pounds of shellfish per year, he estimates.
“To put that into perspective, the entire 2010 Southeast Alaska harvest in the dive and dungeness crab fisheries was 5.9 million pounds,” Stedman said in his sponsor statement.
If unchecked, the population “inevitably threatens the future of dive fisheries and crab fisheries in Southeast; jeopardizing hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in economic activity for the region,” he wrote.
Another justification cited by the bill is that in recent years, ADFG has closed 17 dive fishery harvest areas due to the shrinking biomass.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 removed marine mammals from the State of Alaska’s management denying all but Alaska Natives the opportunity to harvest sea otters. In. 2012, 842 otters were harvested in southeast.
“In the absence of any realistic effort by the USF&WS to provide a sustainable harvest management regime for sea otters, it is my intention through the introduction of SB 60 to incentivize the lawful harvest of sea otters by Alaska Natives to, at the very least, reach the potential biological removal target (2,800),” he said. “The incentive will come in the form of a $100 bounty paid by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for every sea otter harvested.”
The bill carries a fiscal note of $28,000 to pay the bounties on that many animals.
“If you look at the Marine Mammal Protection Act it says no state law can be enforced that impacts a protected marine mammal,” Woods said. “There’s nothing to say they can’t pass the law. But it would be an illegal harvest. We would have to, by law, investigate any action.”
At this point, how a federal-state fight on the matter would play out is just speculation, but Woods suspects there would have to be some court decision expected. Since Alaska Natives are the only ones allowed to hunt otters, there wouldn’t be much difference except in the added incentive of the $100 bounty.
There are three populations of sea otters in Alaska that combine to 98,000 animals. They are in southeast, southcentral and southwestern. The southwestern group of otters– Kodiak and the Aleutian Islands where they were historically hunted to near extinction – still have the otter listed as endangered.
Julianne Curry, executive director of United Fisherman of Alaska, said the group endorses Stedman’s bill. Since 2009, UFA has focused on the issue as part of its sustainable fisheries, advocacy for economic opportunities for rural Alaskans and easing burdens to harvesters.
“I think it’s good to open a dialogue that is a real issue for people having a hard time making a living in the face of a large sea otter population,” Curry said. USFWS could have solved the problem but instead makes it harder for Alaska Natives who would hunt otters. The “significantly altered” law means otter fur has to be transformed into an art or clothing object – raw pelts are illegal to sell to non-Natives.
“That’s one of the biggest hurdles to the exploding sea otter populations. It’s very challenging. There are things they (USFWS) can do internally to address the concerns of Native groups,” Curry said.
If pelts could be sold, more Alaska Natives would hunt them.
Several southeast governments like the Wrangell Borough Assembly back the bill.

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Posted by on Mar 13th, 2013 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses for “A bounty on sea otters? Bill proposes $100 per otter”

  1. MartyTucker says:

    Shoot baby shoot. I’m gonna make some money

  2. Sharon says:

    Well, there we go again. Lets just kill the things that eat things that we kill. Makes about as much sense as killing a kid for eating the food we should have eaten. Touch my steak and you die. Literally. Ridiculous.

  3. Sharon says:

    There are too many children in the world, after all…

  4. David hubbard says:

    Thin them out !!! No Crabs left in bay they eat all the dungies no shrimp ! Sad!

  5. Maybe that’s why the humans are getting thinned out around the world … at this rate, the earth will be stripped of all resources, globally, not for food, but for money. EAT YOUR MONEY.

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