West Cliff Drive is a picture-perfect scenic beach that hosts surfers and tourists throughout the year due to its location, excellent ways, and opportunities to interact with wildlife - that is, until the wildlife interacts back.
Apparently, a sea otter (who is still nameless) has been terrorizing beachgoers since June of this year - and he's growing more aggressive by the day.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to post warning signs for tourists around the beach that say to "enter at your own risk" and keep away from marine wildlife," featuring a contact number at the bottom to report any encounters with the otters.
Native Santa Cruz photographer Mark Woodward managed to capture videos and photos of the event that initially prompted the internet's interest in the situation.
"Since then, in the past five days now, there's been three more incidents of it," Woodward said. "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."
One surfer, Joon Lee, told the LA Times that he was enjoying a peaceful day of surfing when he came into contact with the aggressive otters.
“I was scared. I was trying to swim away, but before I was able to get far, it bit my leash,” he said, referring to the tether surfers wear around their ankles. “So I panicked.” While Lee was dealing with one otter, he said another one got on top of the board. As he tried to flip the board to get it off, the otter became even more aggressive.
"It was a true wrestling match over this surfboard," Woodward said. "And the person finally got it away and it was damaged. Basically, the board was destroyed. 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." This is a rare occurrence on this beach, as animals usually ignore the presence of humans in these waters.
Woodward told media that he's a regular at the beach, and while this was the first incident he witnessed, he'd been hearing rumours about aggressive otters on surfboards before from the community. After capturing this event on his phone, the Santa Cruz local has witnessed three other scary moments with the otters.
“I would start just by saying that this is very unusual and rare,” said Jessica Fujii, the scientific and operational leader of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Program.
“I would not characterise this as a common behaviour for sea otters. We have seen similar instances, you know, over the last several decades ... but the persistence and pattern of this particular otter is fairly unique," continues Fujii.
It's very likely that federal and state wildlife officials will remove the otter from the area to avoid injuries or worse battles.
But the story actually gets more interesting here. Five years ago, there was an otter in Monterey Bay that was approaching kayakers and beginning to get aggressive with them. When officials captured the otter, they realized it was a pregnant mum who was defending her waters and had become too familiar with humans after being fed by tourists in the area.
The pup she gave birth to was tagged and released - and happens to be the same otter that's terrorizing the surfers in Santa Cruz. The otter's caretakers say that this particular otter was raised in captivity and away from its mother, so she wouldn't have learned the behaviour from her. They theorize that this otter was also fed by humans, prompting it to get more aggressive as it searches for food.
She will likely be captured and examined at a local aquarium while officials decide what to do next.
