Sea otters in California have been filmed stealing surfboards away from swimmers, prompting jokes that the mammals have become part of an “uprising”.
Rafts of sea otters, as they are known, are often spotted in the same areas as The Golden State’s surfers.
There are believed to be over 3,000 sea otters in California. Interactions with swimmers are not unheard of, but recently the animals have been attracting a lot of attention.
One particularly memorable sea otter has been called a public safety risk, after it aggressively hijacked a surfer’s board from the coast of Santa Cruz, California, according to a video posted on Twitter on Monday.
The otter is filmed flopped down on one side of the board, whilst the nervous surfer paddles alongside, trying to reclaim it.
In one moment, the sea otter turns on its front and gnashes the board up with its teeth.
An amazing video!
— Native Santa Cruz (@NativeSantaCruz) July 10, 2023
This video of the sea otter attacking a surfboard yesterday was shared me and is being posted with the photographers permission. The video must remain in this tweet to be shared. This is a dangerous sea otter, avoid it if at all possible! pic.twitter.com/N7qPMFVRrt
The native Santa Cruz photographer who took the video, Mark Woodward, told ABC News affiliate KGO likened the interaction to a “wrestling match.”
KGO reported that the otter was caught and will probably stay in captivity.
“Basically, the board was destroyed,” Woodward said, adding that this was not the first sea otter attack he had seen in the area recently.
“Since then, in the past five days now, there’s been three more incidents of it,” Woodward told KGO. “And they’ve all been much more aggressive. I have photographed a lot of otters over the years, I have never seen anything like this.”
“Literally the day before, I filmed the surfer that got so freaked out by it that he left his board and swam back to shore without it,” he added.
More photos from Woodward show otters relaxing on top of another captured surfboard.
Sea otters can live their entire lives without leaving the water, and their fur is the densest of any animal on Earth, with an estimated 1 million hairs per square inch.
Unlike other marine mammals, the sea otter has no blubber to keep itself warm.
It’s also one of the few mammal species on Earth to use a tool to help it hunt and feed; by wedging a rock between its chest and the “armpit” of a foreleg, it pounds shells against it to open them.
The footage of the otters has spurred plenty of jokes and comparisons with the rise in orcas ramming into vessels off the coast of Spain and Portugal.
Last month orcas were seen carrying out attacks on sail boats off the coast of Spain, and allegedly doing it for an “adrenaline shot”, according to one researcher.
People have been warned to avoid the area, with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) telling KTVU that the sea otters are showing “concerning and unusual behavior”.
It is possible the animals are acting aggressively due to humans constantly feeding them or hormonal surges, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told KGO.
“They’re actually pretty aggressive animals,” San José State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories Professor David Ebert told KGO. “They’re not as cute and cuddly as people tend to think.”
