Sea Otter Quotes

He knew the terrible tales of sea otters choking on polyethylene rings from beer six-packs; of swans and gulls strangled by nylon nets and fishing lines; of a green sea turtle in Hawaii dead with a pocket comb, a foot of nylon rope, and a toy truck wheel lodged in its gut. His personal worst

A WATERY BLISS As busy as an ice cream freezer, On a Sunday getting hotter, Happy is the honey eater- The busy ocean otter, Floating alongside Teter, On a sea full of water.

In possibly one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other.

After that summer, after being friends with Won-a-nee and her young, I never killed another otter. I had an otter cape for my shoulders, which I used until it wore out, but never again did I make a new one. Nor did I ever kill another cormorant for its beautiful feathers, though they have long, think necks and make ugly sounds when they talk to each other. Nor did I kill seals for their sinews, using instead kelp to bind the things that needed it. Nor did I kill another wild dog, nor did I try to speak another sea elephant. Ulape would have laughed at me, and other would have laughed, too -- my father most of all. Yet this is the way I felt about the animals who had become my friends and those who were not, bu in time could be. If Ulape and my father had come back and laughed, and all the other had come back and laughed, still I would have felt the same way, for animals and birds are like people, too, though they do no talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.

She might be the Archive, but she's still a kid, Kincaid." He frowned and looked at me. "So?" "So? Kids like cute." He blinked at me. "Cute?" "Come on." I led him downstairs. On the lower level of the Oceanarium there's an inner ring of exhibits, too, containing both penguins and--wait for it--sea otters. I mean, come on, sea otters. They open abalone with rocks while floating on their backs. How much cuter does it get than small, fuzzy, floating, playful tool users with big, soft brown eyes?

sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other.

Transient orcas?” Beck leaned toward the monitor as images of whales flashed on screen. “Subspecies of killer whale,” said Ring. “Highly specialized. Extraordinarily lethal—if you happen to be a seal. Transient orcas eat only mammals. Seals, sea lions, sea otters, porpoises, other whales. Sometimes they’ll help themselves to a swimming moose or deer, as well. No fish, though. They hate fish.

I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that too, but I wouldn’t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun. With Nick, I understood finally. Because he was so much fun. It was like dating a sea otter.

Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.

Firther evidence of the difficulties of reduced-gravity-sex comes from the sea otter. To help hold the female in place, the male will typically pull the female's head back and grab onto her nose with his teeth. "Our vets have had to do rhinoplasty on some of the females", says Michaelle Stadler, a sea otter reseach coordinator at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sex can also be traumatic for the male otter, who endures aerial pecking attacks by sea gulls mistaking his erect penis for a novel ocean delicacy.

I’ve heard rumors that writing can feel glamorous. But only glamorous, I’d guess, in the way a stretch limo might feel glamorous. No matter the pomp, one still has to crouch inside. Like skulking through a low-lit leather tunnel. An uncooperative space. Writing is awkward work and it’s become clearer to me why friends of mine have relinquished their desks and write instead from the comfort of their beds. Not in bed. From bed. Like sea otters floating on their backs, double-chinned and banging their front paws on a keyboard.

Hot nights filled with summer thunder. Heat lightning far and thin and the midnight sky becrazed and mended back again. Suttree moved down to the gravelbar on the river and spread his blanket there under the gauzy starwash and lay naked with his back pressed to the wheeling earth. The river chattered and sucked past at his elbow. He'd lie awake long after the last dull shapes in the coals of the cookfire died and he'd go naked into the cool and velvet waters and submerge like an otter and come up and blow, the stones smooth as marbles under his cupped toes and the dark water reeling past his eyes. He'd lie on his back in the shallows and on these nights he'd see stars come adrift and rifle hot and dying across the face of the firmament. The enormity of the universe filled him with a strange sweet woe. She always found him. She'd come pale and naked from the trees into the water like some dream old prisoners harbor or sailors at sea. Or touch his cheek where he lay sleeping and say his name. Holding her arms aloft like a child for him to raise up over them the nightshirt that she wore and her to lie cool and naked against his side.

We feel the life and motion about us, and the universal beauty: the tides marching back and forth with weariless industry, laving the beautiful shores, and swaying the purple dulse of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed, the wild streams in rows white with waterfalls, ever in bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains; the vast forests feeding on the drenching sunbeams, every cell in a whirl of enjoyment; misty flocks of insects stirring all the air, the wild sheep and goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, bears in the berry-tangles, mink and beaver and otter far back on many a river and lake; Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways; birds tending to their young—everywhere, everywhere, beauty and life, and glad, rejoicing action. In this moment, he was experiencing what the Stoics would call sympatheia—a connectedness with the cosmos. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has referred to it as the “oceanic feeling.” A sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing that “human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.

I REMEMBER the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was—a red ship with two red sails. My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbor which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring. My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings. I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails. But Ramo’s eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard’s and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most. This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly. “The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.” “Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones.” “This one does.” “Not on the sea,” I said. “Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds.” “It is a whale, maybe.” Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told. “While you gaze at the sea,” I said, “I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not.” Ramo began to punch at the earth with his stick, but as the ship came closer, its sails showing red through the morning mist, he kept watching it, acting all the time as if he were not. “Have you ever seen a red whale?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, though I never had. “Those I have seen are gray.” “You are very young and have not seen everything that swims in the world.” Ramo picked up a root and was about to drop it into the basket. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and then closed again. “A canoe!” he cried. “A great one, bigger than all of our canoes together. And red!” A canoe or a ship, it did not matter to Ramo. In the very next breath he tossed the root in the air and was gone, crashing through the brush, shouting as he went. I kept on gathering roots, but my hands trembled as I dug in the earth, for I was more excited than my brother. I knew that it was a ship there on the

She’s not your mother. She’s not a woman; she’s not even human. From the moment she went over, we lost her just as surely as if she’d died. They do not live for our benefit. They belong to Themselves.” I remembered the rolling otter and its sweet-looking paws – dashing that urchin with the rock and the blood staining the water. I remembered the jewel-red carb – dragging that scavenged flesh into the sea grass. I’d found them comical, and pretty, but they were their own creatures too, just as my aunt had said, and busy with the job of living. They probably didn’t even see me. I remembered the way the cave spiders and suchlike scurried to hide from me in the rocks. They were not there for us. They had their own mysterious life living inside them. Their world was not my world, their story not mine.

A much studied example is the sea otter in California. The otter all but disappeared during the nineteenth century because of excessive hunting for its pelts. After federal regulators in 1911 forbade further hunting of this lovely creature, the otter made a dramatic comeback. Because it feeds on urchins, with the increase in otters the urchin population went down. With fewer urchins around, the number of kelps, a favorite food of urchins, increased dramatically. This increased the supply of food for fish and protected the coast from erosion. Therefore, protection of only one species, a hub, drastically altered both the economy and the ecology of the coastline. Indeed, finfish dominate in coastal fisheries once dedicated to shellfish.

In possibly one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each

We Eskimos never hunted because we liked it; we killed only as many animals as we needed to live, then preserved the meat and ate it slowly, never wasting it, and used the skins to make our clothes and shoes,” I explained. “Then foreign fur traders came to trick us, threatening us until soon we were killing as many sea otters as we could because their fur could be sold at high prices. After many years there were no more sea otters nearby, so we started making long trips in search of new hunting grounds.

Bald eagles wheeled above the Sound, their commanding silhouettes outlined by blue sky. Belted kingfishers, with their fluffy topknots, often left their perches in the trees along the beach to flutter their blue-and-white plumage past my bunker. They eyed me through the unglazed window with fearless curiosity. River otters scooched along the beach below me sometimes, and once in a while I saw an orca breach, carving an arc between sea and sky. Their sleek black-and-white beauty was no less majestic than that of the eagles, and I cheered softly when I caught sight of them.

Did you know sea otters hold hands when sleeping so they never, ever drift apart?

The Poised Edge of Chaos Sand sifts down, one grain at a time, forming a small hill. When it grows high enough, a tiny avalanche begins. Let sand continue to sift down, and avalanches will occur irregularly, in no predictable order, until there is a tiny mountain range of sand. Peaks will appear, and valleys, and as sand continues to descend, the relentless sand, piling up and slipping down, piling up and slipping down, piling up - eventually a single grain will cause a catastrophe, all the hills and valleys erased, the whole face of the landscape changed in an instant. Walking yesterday, my heels crushed chamomile and released intoxicating memories of home. Earlier this week, I wrote an old love, flooded with need and desire. Last month I planted new flowers in an old garden bed - one grain at a time, a pattern is formed, one grain at a time, a pattern is destroyed, and there is no way to know which grain will build the tiny mountain higher, which grain will tilt the mountain into avalanche, whether the avalanche will be small or catastrophic, enormous or inconsequential. We are always dancing with chaos, even when we think we move too gracefully to disrupt anything in the careful order of our lives, even when we deny the choreography of passion, hoping to avoid earthquakes and avalanches, turbulence and elemental violence and pain. We are always dancing with chaos, for the grains sift down upon the landscape of our lives, one, then another, one, then another, one then another. Today I rose early and walked by the sea, watching the changing patterns of the light and the otters rising and the gulls descending, and the boats steaming off into the dawn, and the smoke drifting up into the sky, and the waves drumming on the dock, and I sang. An old song came upon me, one with no harbour nor dawn nor dock, no woman walking in the mist, no gulls, no boats departing for the salmon shoals. I sang, but not to make order of the sea nor of the dawn, nor of my life. Not to make order at all. Only to sing, clear notes over sand. Only to walk, footsteps in sand. Only to live.

A keystone, that’s called, and without it everything falls, like a tower of blocks or a house of cards. It’s the same with keystone species— beavers, wolves, prairie dogs, bees, desert tortoises, sea otters— they are nature’s glue, holding habitats together.

Look out for the baby seals!” I yelled. “Don’t let the torpedo blow them up!” “I’m doing my best!” Erica yelled back. “You know how I feel about baby seals!” I did. Despite her generally tough and cold exterior, Erica loved baby seals. And sea otters. And kittens. Back at our original spy school, her dormitory walls had been covered with posters of them (as well as one incredibly precious baby sloth)

Many of the salmon that reached the sea alive were taken in the nets of fishermen rough-fish-catching, in the estuary Pool, to be knocked on the head and thrown back - for the fishermen hated the water-bailiffs who upheld the Conservancy Bye-laws protecting salmon out of season, and secretly killed the fish because of their hatred. The fisherman did not believe that salmon spawned in fresh water, where the rivers were young, but regarded it as a story told to prevent them fishing for salmon throughout the year.

Elsewhere as Baker muses on the fluidity and apparent joyfulness of a seal’s motion at sea he speculates: It is a good life, a seal’s, here in these shallow waters. Like the lives of so many air and water creatures, it seems a better one than ours. We have no element. Nothing sustains us when we fall. Here Baker edges towards a remarkable revelation about the whole nature-writing genre. On reading the passage, one thinks of the specific creatures (as well as their most devoted author/admirers) that have made the deepest appeal to the modern British imagination: the otter (Henry Williamson, Gavin Maxwell), whales and dolphins (Heathcote Williams and the whole New-Age fixation with cetaceans) and birds, particularly birds of prey (W.H. Hudson, T.H. White and J.A. Baker himself). If we cannot move between the elements like these wonderful animals, then humans can at least imagine what it is like to be an otter or a peregrine. But no writer I know has taken us deeper into the life of another creature and allowed us to experience how that elemental mastery might possibly feel than John Alec Baker. Mark Cocker, March 2010

one of nature’s strangest yet most pleasing sights: a female sea otter swimming along on her back with a baby nestled securely on her belly,

used to hunt sea otters and fur seals for the furs. There was no trapping during the war.

Humans have hunted tigers by various means for millennia, but not long ago there was a strange and heated moment in our venerable relationship with these animals that has been echoed repeatedly in our relations with other species. It bears some resemblance to what wolves do when they get into a sheep pen: they slaughter simply because they can and, in the case of humans, until a profit can no longer be turned. For the sea otter, this moment occurred between 1790 and 1830; for the American bison, it happened between 1850 and 1880; for the Atlantic cod, it lasted for centuries, ending only in 1990. These mass slaughters have their analogue in the financial markets to which they are often tied, and they end the same way every time. The Canadian poet Eric Miller summed up the mind-set driving these binges better than just about anyone: A cornucopia! Bliss of killing without ever seeming to subtract from the tasty sum of infinity!

one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other. Elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than they are shrews.

St Cuthbert was called to be a hermit on Lindis­farne. This was more than a thousand years ago. There were only small wooden huts there then, and the wind and the wild sea and everything that lived in the wild sea. Cuthbert went out there to the mon­astery, but the monastery was not far enough and he was called out further. He rowed to an empty island, where he ate onions and the eggs of seabirds and stood in the sea and prayed while sea otters played around his ankles. He lived there alone for years, but then he was called back. The King of Northumbria came to him with some churchmen, and they told him he had been elected Bishop of Lindisfarne and they asked him to come back and serve. There’s a Victorian painting of the king and the her­mit. Cuthbert wears a dirty brown robe and has one calloused hand on a spade. The king is offering him a bishop’s crosier. Behind him, monks kneel on the sands and pray he will accept it. Behind them are the beached sailboats that brought them to the island. The air is filled with swallows. Cuthbert’s head is turned away from the king, he looks down at the ground and his left hand is held up in a gesture of refusal. But he didn’t refuse, in the end. He didn’t refuse the call. He went back. We head out because the emptiness negates us. We leave the cities and we go to the wild high places to be dissolved and to be small. We live and die at once, the topsoil is washed away and the rock is exposed and it is not possible to play the games anymore. Now I am exposed rock. Like Cuthbert, I have been washed clean. What do I see?

Mary" was my mother’s mother And my sister too. There’s rain in the river. There’s a river running through To the sea around these islands, Crying tears of sorrow and pain. There’s rain in the river; There’s a river in my veins. Mary, young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be.) Living lines of memory drew the markings on my hands. Ancient lines of living love are waking in this land. Saying: “I am in the city, in the forest and the field; I am in the bounty, come on, know me as I yield. I am in the falcon, in the otter and the stoat; I am in the turtle dove with nowhere left to go. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: “Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same”. Mary Ethel Ruddock, 1912 to 72, Though we never met in flesh, now I remember you Were warm and you were gentle; you were modest; you were kind. A mother, wife and gran; you were a woman of your time. Do we know your life in colour? Do we celebrate your flame, Remembering your offering With a candle in your name? Mary young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be). She says: I am in the living; I am in the dying too. I am in the stillness, Can you see me as I move? I am in the Hawthorn, in the Apple and the Beech; I am in the mayhem and the medicine of speech. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: “Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.

Mary" was my mother’s mother And my sister too. There’s rain in the river. There’s a river running through To the sea around these islands, Crying tears of sorrow and pain. There’s rain in the river; There’s a river in my veins. Mary, young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be.) Living lines of memory drew the markings on my hands. Ancient lines of living love are waking in this land. Saying: “I am in the city, in the forest and the field; I am in the bounty, come on, know me as I yield. I am in the falcon, in the otter and the stoat; I am in the turtle dove with nowhere left to go. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.'" Mary Ethel Ruddock, 1912 to 72, Though we never met in flesh, now I remember you Were warm and you were gentle; you were modest; you were kind. A mother, wife and gran; you were a woman of your time. Do we know your life in colour? Do we celebrate your flame, Remembering your offering With a candle in your name? Mary young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be). She says: "I am in the living; I am in the dying too. I am in the stillness, Can you see me as I move? I am in the Hawthorn, in the Apple and the Beech; I am in the mayhem and the medicine of speech. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.

Mary" was my mother’s mother And my sister too. There’s rain in the river. There’s a river running through To the sea around these islands, Crying tears of sorrow and pain. There’s rain in the river; There’s a river in my veins. Mary, young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be.) Living lines of memory drew the markings on my hands. Ancient lines of living love are waking in this land, Saying: “I am in the city, in the forest and the field; I am in the bounty, come on, know me as I yield. I am in the falcon, in the otter and the stoat; I am in the turtle dove with nowhere left to go. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.'" Mary Ethel Ruddock, 1912 to 72, Though we never met in flesh, now I remember you Were warm and you were gentle; you were modest; you were kind. A mother, wife and gran; you were a woman of your time. Do we know your life in colour? Do we celebrate your flame, Remembering your offering With a candle in your name? Mary young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be). She says: "I am in the living; I am in the dying too. I am in the stillness, Can you see me as I move? I am in the Hawthorn, in the Apple and the Beech; I am in the mayhem and the medicine of speech. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.

Mary" was my mother’s mother And my sister too. There’s rain in the river. There’s a river running through To the sea around these islands, Crying tears of sorrow and pain. There’s rain in the river; There’s a river in my veins. Mary, young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be.) Living lines of memory drew the markings on my hands. Ancient lines of living love are waking in this land, Saying: “I am in the city, in the forest and the field; I am in the bounty, come on, know me as I yield. I am in the falcon, in the otter and the stoat; I am in the turtle dove with nowhere left to go. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.'" Mary Ethel Ruddock, 1912 to 72, Though we never met in flesh, now I remember you Were warm and you were gentle; you were modest; you were kind. A mother, wife and gran; you were a woman of your time. Do we know your life in colour? Do we celebrate your flame, Remembering your offering With a candle in your name? Mary, young as we may be, you know the blood in you and me is as old as blood can be (is as old as blood can be). She says: "I am in the living; I am in the dying too. I am in the stillness, Can you see me as I move? I am in the Hawthorn, in the Apple and the Beech; I am in the mayhem and the medicine of speech. And in the moment of blind madness, as he’s pushing her away, I am in the lover and in the ear who hears her say: 'Can we begin again? Oh baby it’s me again. I know you are so different to me but I love you just the same. I love you just the same. Love you just the same. I love you just the same.

Or the learn rules for the game the sea otters Play in the surf

. . sea otters?

. . . sea otters?

Relatively speaking, the tigers’ appetite for us pales before our appetite for them. Humans have haunted tigers by various means for millennia, but not long ago there was a strange and heated moment in our venerable relationship with these animals that has been echoed repeatedly in our relations with other species. It bears some resemblance to what wolves do when they get into a sheep pen: they slaughter simply because they can and, in the case of humans, until a profit can no longer be turned. For the sea otter, this moment occurred between 1790 and 1830; for the American bison, it happened between 1850 and 1880; for the Atlantic cod, it lasted for centuries, ending only in 1990. These mass slaughters have their analogue in the financial markets to which they are often tied, and they end the same way every time. The Canadian poet Eric Miller summed up the mind-set driving these binges better than just about anyone: A cornucopia! / Bliss of killing without ever seeming to subtract from the tasty sum of infinity!

possibly one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other.

Animals President Theodore Roosevelt (after whom the Teddy Bear is named) was particularly fond of animals, having five guinea pigs called Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, Admiral Dewey, and Father O’Grady. He also owned a small bear called Jonathan Edwards, a lizard by the name of Bill, Baron Spreckle (a hen), a badger called Josiah, Eli Yale the parrot and - brilliantly - a snake known to his family as Emily Spinach. In its lifetime, an albatross is believed to fly around fifteen million miles. To put that into perspective, it is the same as flying half way to Mars when it is at its closest distance to the Earth. In possibly one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other. Elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than they are shrews. Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find anything else to eat. Amazingly, they can consume up to 95% of their own bodyweight and still survive.