Looks like a big one.

Can you see it?

Oh we're so lucky!

We've actually spotted a mother and her cub.

They're just hanging on to each other right at the surface.

It's incredible.

It's already a good morning.

Oh my god it's got a clam and a rock!

Oh this is amazing!

Wait is that an octopus?

Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault and you're watching Animalogic.

What do you get when you combine the brains to make tools, the best cold water gear in the world, and sharp teeth capable of breaking crab shells?

It's not a navy seal or even a regular seal.

It's the deadly, ferocious, vicious, back-from-the-brink sea otter.

And who am I kidding?

These guys are adorable!

Tofino.

One of North America's most biodiverse ecosystems.

Here you'll find everything from jellyfish, Oh look at that jelly!

to massive slugs, to coastal black bears, to seal-eating coastal wolves, to the fastest porpoises in the world.

There's a dolphin porpoise following right along on the boat.

It's right beside me, right below me.

But we're here to see something pretty special.

These coasts are home to one of the cutest mammals on the face of the earth.

It's an absolutely beautiful morning out here on the ocean just off the coast of Vancouver Island and we're out looking for some marine otters.

Right now I'm at the top of a double-decker boat operated by our friends at Aquatic Safaris in Tofino.

They're experts at finding local wildlife and having tall boats makes it easier to spot sea otters.

Let's go see some otters.

Oh there's one right there.

That way, right behind us.

Sea otters live exclusively in the North Pacific.

From northern Japan, across the Bering Strait, all the way down to Baja.

This area of British Columbia is more temperate than most of their range and is known to be home to a small colony of otters.

We're scanning the surface of this kelp forest here, hoping to find some sea otters.

Though it's getting pretty cold for us, otters don't mind the weather at all.

They even thrive in colder regions.

I feel like anywhere that you see a mat of kelp at the surface, your chances are pretty good at seeing a marine otter.

Most marine mammals battle freezing temperatures by growing thick layers of blubber and becoming chonky boys.

Sea otters have evolved to keep trim at a lean 40 kilograms.

And instead of getting fat, they just wear the best coat on the planet.

Oh, I found some more.

There's some more over there.

Or there's at least one, two, three.

Oh my god, there's like, there's three right there.

Holy.

They have the densest fur in the world to keep themselves warm.

Older otters can have a million hairs per square inch.

That's a thousand times denser than a human scalp.

Bonkers.

They can grow 400,000 hairs on an area the size of a penny.

All right, we're super lucky because we just spotted a sea otter down in this kelp forest over here.

But the fur itself doesn't keep otters warm.

Rather, it creates a layer of air that insulates them.

Their hair is also barbed, which makes it more likely to get matted and better at holding in bubbles.

Researchers have recently discovered that those bubbles provide better insulation than blubber.

Their buoyancy is a feature that's especially useful when they're pups.

Otters are year-round moms.

Half the year they're pregnant and the other half they're taking care of their baby.

Luckily, our friends at Elkhorn Slow in California have been keeping track of their population using otter cams.

And they got to witness this amazing birth live.

The first thing the mom does is lick the baby until it's dry.

All the licking makes the hair so fluffy that they're physically unable to sink.

They're like a furry beach ball on the water.

They almost look like they have a permanent flotation device or something because they're always just so comfortably laying in the water, floating at the surface.

Unfortunately, their amazing fur has caused them a lot of trouble since humans caught wind that they could make a lot of money off them.

The great hunt started in the mid-1700s when Russian fur traders realized they could sell otter pelts for 20 times more than sable pelts.

This led them to expand their area of operation to North America and soon after, other nations entered the otter fur trade.

In the following 200 years, the worldwide otter population declined from hundreds of thousands across the North Pacific to just over a thousand in a few isolated pockets.

The local population here on Vancouver Island was totally extirpated.

This caused significant ecological damage.

So, starting in the 1960s, a reintroduction program started to bring Alaskan otters to repopulate the island.

Sea otters are a keystone species and control sea urchin populations which are voracious kelp eaters.

These sea otters live, eat and breed in these kelp forests that they call home.

Dozens of invertebrate species and several fish species require kelp forests to survive.

Without otters, they disappear too.

Thankfully, sea otter populations have recovered from the brink of extinction but they are still endangered.

Despite all of their challenges, they're slowly but surely recovering.

Their worldwide population is over a thousand times larger than it was a hundred years ago and about two-thirds of the pre-great hunt numbers.

This otter we're seeing here is a descendant of those Alaskan otters and the kelp is part of the forest that they helped bring back.

And the boom in biodiversity has been a boon to other mammals, such as these sea doggos.

Sea otters eat a lot.

They eat about 20% of their body weight in food every day.

Luckily, they're able to eat a huge amount of prey species.

But slow-moving animals from the sea bottom, such as large bivalves, are their favourite snacks.

They have very strong jaws and sharp teeth which allow them to crack open crabs.

A perfect treat for a lazy day in the sun.

In most of their range, clams and mussels are the staples of their diet.

But clam shells are too tough to break open by bite alone.

And so, sea otters have taken the same jump humanity did and they've started to use tools.

I never thought I'd see this.

This is amazing.

To open up a clam, sea otters use sharp rocks.

Under each of their arms, they have flaps of loose skin, which they use to store food and also to hang on to their favourite rocks.

They then return to the surface with a tasty clam.

They roll onto their backs and smack the living daylights out of the clam until it breaks.

Then, it's lunchtime!

They're not picky though.

They'll eat whatever they can catch.

Their only limitation is depth.

Despite being able to hold their breath for eight minutes, they can only dive to about 40 metres.

Their bubbles trapped in their fur make them too buoyant to go any deeper.

But that's alright.

Digging through the floor of shallow waters makes them as happy as a clam.

Well, maybe not these particular clams.

But just when we thought we couldn't see anything cooler than an otter opening up a clam… Wait, is that an octopus?

That's right!

This industrious sea otter was able to capture one of the world's greatest escape artists, an octopus!

When in Rome!

So what should I talk about next?

Please let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for new episodes of Animalogic every week.

Thanks for watching and see ya!