Half a century ago, sea otters were on the brink of extinction along British Columbia’s coast.
Pulled from the frigid, untamed waters of Alaska, these charismatic creatures were brought back to their ancestral habitat. Today, they thrive through kelp forests and rugged inlets, celebrated as a symbol of one of the conservation’s greatest comebacks.
But with their return has come an unexpected reckoning, leading some First Nations to ask for the return of hunting — a practice that has been outlawed for generations.
Mariah Charleson, the 37-year-old chief councillor of Hesquiaht First Nation, grew up paddling in Hot Springs Cove off the west coast of Vancouer Island, which was once rich with clams and Dungeness crabs. Just across from her childhood home, the seabed teemed with shellfish, and crab traps were set regularly. But over the last decade, shellfish have vanished as sea otters consume the same clams, crabs and other marine species that Hesquiaht families have relied on for generations.
“A child now wouldn’t grow up seeing any of that. When I was a child, that was part of daily life. Now, it’s no longer possible,” she said.
Sea otters consume roughly a third of their body weight each day, decimating shellfish beds. In response, some Nuu Chah Nulth community leaders urge the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to establish a regulated sea otter hunt — a way for communities to reclaim stewardship and balance ecological and cultural needs.
Sea otter harvesting was a tightly regulated practice among Indigenous communities, said Cliff Atleo, an elder from the Ahousaht First Nation. “It wasn't about destroying a population or anything like that. It was about managing and protecting a food chain,” he said.
Historically, the communities carefully managed harvest zones by killing sea otters and anchoring their bodies around the urchin beds. “It was a sign to the other sea otters to stay out of that area,” Charleson said. “That's something that our ancestors would have done.”
There is currently no authorized harvest of sea otters, including for food, social or ceremonial purposes. Charleson said they had asked DFO directly what information they had on sea otter numbers and on the species they feed on in their territories. “DFO doesn’t have any of that data,” she said. “They’re missing a really important part of the picture. We live it every day and what they rely on is just poor, spotty data.”
In response to questions from Canada’s National Observer, a spokesperson for the DFO said that the department is aware some First Nations are interested in harvesting the species and that it’s working with experts to update and collect sea otter population data.
The recovery of sea otters is hailed as a conservation success story but for coastal Indigenous communities, they are unraveling the lifeblood of traditional shellfish harvests, pitting the protection of a species against the preservation of a way of life.
Shellfish vs sea otters
Andrew Trites, director of Marine Mammal Research Unit and professor of Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, said sea otters are among the most “influential predators” in coastal ecosystems. Sea otters eat large numbers of sea urchins, which otherwise would overgraze kelp, protecting and allowing kelp forests to thrive. They also dig up clams, turning over the seabed “much like a farmer would turn over soil.”
While they are important for the ecosystem's health, their feeding drastically reduces shellfish species that hold cultural and economic importance for many First Nations communities.
“Sea otters love to eat everything that humans love to eat,” said Jenn Burt, a marine ecologist and BC marine program lead at Nature United. “Wherever sea otters are, the things that we love to eat typically aren't. Crabs, clams, sea urchins, most shellfish get very heavily depleted where sea otters are.”
But instead of being seen as pests or competitors, sea otters held a special place, she said.
Otters are the original keystone species — the critical “lock” holding an ecosystem together — that once roamed the entire stretch of ocean from California to Japan and lived in delicate balance with other marine life and the Indigenous peoples who inhabited those shores for millennia. Burt described this as a system marked by “really complex management and governance systems in place.” Indigenous communities developed specific ways to care for and regulate sea otter populations.
“They didn’t totally eliminate them. They have rules about who could hunt sea otters, how many, and where — that’s a system that evolved over thousands of years,” she said.
That balance was shattered when European fur traders arrived. They hunted sea otters almost to extinction for their prized fur, the densest and most luxurious in the animal kingdom, in a reversal from the previous era of harvests led by hereditary chiefs who held exclusive rights to the hunt. “Not only did [European fur traders] wipe out sea otters, they disrupted the governance systems that Indigenous people had built. Indigenous management was replaced by Canadian management. That was a huge shift,” she said.
In the absence of sea otters, urchins thrived, mowing down the kelp forests that act as nurseries for innumerable coastal species, alongside other knock-on impacts.
In the late 1960s and early 70s, sea otters were reintroduced along the BC coast and their numbers soared. The media and textbooks celebrate this as a clear conservation success: “An endangered species brought back to life. Sea otters control sea urchin populations, kelp forests thrive, biodiversity grows. Everyone thinks it’s a win-win,” she said.
Burt said the reality is more complicated.
“The return of sea otters is not a success story for everybody,” she said. “Sea otters recovered without being managed in the traditional ways. Their numbers grew uncontrolled.”
On parts of northern and western Vancouver Island, sea otters are “at carrying capacity,” meaning the population is at the maximum level the environment can sustain with signs like less well-fed pups and increased natural mortality. “They have eaten up their food supply,” she said.
Alongside First Nations communities, geoduck and sea urchin fishers all along the BC coast are also impacted by the return of sea otters.
Mike Featherstone, president of the Pacific Urchin Harvesters Association, said the change has been swift and devastating for harvesters. Areas that once produced more than a million pounds of sea urchins a year are barren within two seasons of otters moving in.
Once they establish themselves, commercial harvests collapse. “They’re very efficient at wiping out sea urchins,” he said.
Along the Central Coast of BC, the return and expansion of sea otters has led to closures of commercial shellfish fisheries. "Eventually there won’t be any fishing if they continue to expand,” Featherstone said.
Grant Dovey, executive director of the Underwater Harvesters Association, said sea otters are steadily eroding the geoduck fishery as well. The association’s internal data, which goes back to 1976, shows that by 2023, roughly 15 per cent of commercial geoduck biomass had been affected by otter predation, a number that is continuing to rise.
Dovey said commercial fishing areas have been shrinking significantly, with the fleet now focused mainly around Tofino and Barkley Sound because sea otters have pushed them out of traditional harvesting grounds further north. "We are hopeful that once sea otters reach carrying capacity in particular areas there will still be a geoduck resource to harvest, but we are realistic. Some areas seem to co-exist; some areas don’t,” he said.
Balancing culture and conservation
Trites said sea otters can be polarizing: on one side, people see them as “cute” and charming animals; on the other, they are viewed as menaces destroying access to shellfish.
“I’m not sure there’s really a middle ground, but perhaps one way forward is for Indigenous communities to reflect on how their ancestors managed hunting in the past,” he said.
Sea otter harvesting was historically restricted and governed by ceremonial protocols. The pelts were used for ceremonial purposes and conveyed social status — not for mass consumption or commercial sale — until the advent of Western and Asian demand. The harvest remained limited, with a priority on ensuring people had enough food to sustain themselves, he said.
Atleo said sea otter population levels remain a pressing concern for their communities.
"There needs to be some level of harvesting now, because there’s just way too many — it’s an imbalance," he said.
He criticized the current management and said it has “no plan” and that policies have failed to recognize the harms of uncontrolled sea otter population growth on traditional food sources. The community members have not been compensated for the loss of seafood that has “gone on for over 40 years.”
“Our people are suffering because of it,” he said. Sea otters “eat voraciously” and have multiplied beyond what Indigenous stewardship would allow.
“The newcomers don’t understand this,” Alteo said. “They don’t realize the impact it has on our food chain.”
Trites said he is skeptical of claims of sea otter “overpopulation,” noting the species is still recovering. “Numbers remain at about 15 per cent of their historic levels,” he said. He said it remains a “shifting baseline” where people’s sense of what is normal changes over time.
“People grew up in a time when sea otters were virtually gone, so the ocean without them became the accepted norm.” Despite the ecological ripple effects, more otters also meant more urchins; more clams; more geoducks. Trites added that their “recolonization” is often seen as a threat, even though it represents a return to a more natural ecosystem.
Sea otters in B.C. are steadily recovering but still far below their historic population numbers. Sea otters are listed federally as a species of Special Concern under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, down from Endangered status in 2022. Provincially, they are Blue Listed under the BC Wildlife Act, which gives them legal protection. Without any protection they would be in immediate danger, he said.
“Sea otters are probably one of the easiest marine mammals to exterminate and yet they survived,” Trites said.
Burt said that balancing these needs is critical. “We want sea otters to thrive and ecosystems to recover. But humans are part of that ecosystem, too, and require access to food. Indigenous peoples hunted sea otters sustainably for thousands of years, but that relationship has not been restored,” she said.
Burt’s previous research took an in-depth look at the relationship between otters and Indigenous communities in British Columbia and Alaska. In Alaska, Indigenous people are legally allowed to hunt sea otters under exemptions in the Marine Mammal Protection Act. This legal framework, along with extensive community monitoring programs, gave Indigenous hunters agency and a “healthier relationship” with sea otters through their traditional hunting practices, she said. Hunters in Alaska collaborated with scientists by submitting blood, tissue and teeth samples to understand and sustain population health.
In contrast, Indigenous communities in B.C. have no such legal exemption. “The federal government is making all the decisions about sea otters,” she said.
Currently, DFO works with Indigenous communities to help manage marine mammals, making sure they can harvest for food, social and ceremonial purposes while still protecting conservation. After the Supreme Court’s Sparrow decision, which confirmed that Indigenous harvesting rights come first once conservation needs are met, the DFO relies on scientific assessments of the population’s health to decide safe harvest limits.
Burt pointed to other marine mammals as examples of Indigenous co-management in Canada. In the Beaufort Sea, the federal government supports community-based hunting of beluga whales. Similarly there is also an experimental three-year community-based harvest of narwhals in Nunavut. These examples, she said, show that managing the harvest of marine mammals is not new and could serve as a model for sea otters.
First Nations and researchers are clear that hunting sea otters is not done to eat them but to protect access to other important food sources, Burt said. “You're harvesting the beluga whales to eat the beluga, but you're hunting sea otters so that you can have clams. You're hunting sea otters so that you can have sea urchins. It is literally a direct tie to food.”
When sea otters return, they “literally abolish your ability to eat from the shoreline,” and Indigenous communities are seeking to restore “their ability to eat from the ocean that they have always eaten," she said.
First Nations leaders want to work on solutions that could allow “controlled harvesting” to restore balance while respecting the species’ role.
Charleson said they raised the idea of anchoring sea otter carcasses with the DFO, as this was a traditional practice of their ancestors. However, since sea otters remain on the special concern list, they cannot be harmed or harvested in any way, even for management purposes. “That’s where we don’t agree and that’s where we’re just going to continue butting heads,” she said.
Trites said he is skeptical about some traditional deterrents, including anchoring, to keep otters away from food sources.
“As a biologist and looking at animals that are motivated by food, I'm not sure whether or not that would be effective,” he said, though any historical practice deserves serious consideration given it arose from long-term Indigenous stewardship.
Burt said there needs to be robust frameworks of co-management and co-governance with Indigenous peoples. “This is not about going out and like shooting sea otters for fun,” she said.
Charleson said the key to finding a solution is staying involved throughout the process. “Without it, we'll never agree on what's going on.”
She said the Indigenous worldview has long recognized the inter-connectedness of all things.
“Sea otters do play a significant role and we understand that important role but we're also seeing that we're not in balance right now,” she said. “Conservationists may not see the cultural importance, but for us these practices have carried on for thousands of years. You can’t just erase them. They are part of who we are, and they’ve helped us survive.”