Wanted: Authorities on the lookout for adorable surfboard-hijacking sea otter menacing Santa Cruz surfers

Surfers, y’otter watch out.

A sea otter with a mean streak has been aggressively hijacking surfboards in the Santa Cruz area, authorities warn, and they’re scrambling to capture it before things get ugly.

That’s right, a sea otter — the impossibly cute, playful, beagle-sized fur-balls once hunted to near extinction for their luxuriously thick pelts that frolic in the water to the delight of millions of aquarium visitors a year.

It turns out these wild animals can be, well, wild. They also have sharp teeth and a bite force said to equal that of a 600-pound black bear, all to gnaw through the tough shells of the crabs and sea urchins they eat.

“While there have been no confirmed reports of injury, due to the highly unusual behavior of this otter, kayakers, surfers, and others recreating in the area should not approach the otter or encourage the otter’s interactions,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a straight-faced statement Wednesday.

And at Santa Cruz’s Cowell Beach, where the mellow summer waves are popular with longboard surfers and surfing schools, a sign posted on the stairwell down to the water carries a similar warning under an image of the innocent-looking creature: “Aggressive sea otter in this area. Enter the water at your own risk.”

That didn’t deter Ken McMullen from enjoying a morning surf with his teenage son and daughter.

“You see them out there all the time,” McMullen, 54, of Capitola, said of the critters after leaving the water unmolested. “They’re usually really friendly. You do your thing, they do their thing.”

Perhaps he was just lucky. Mark Woodward, a local photographer who posts his work on Twitter under @NativeSantaCruz, said he was surprised to see the creature approach a surf club in the water on June 18, hopping atop a riders’ board and refusing to get off.

An amazing video!
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

— Native Santa Cruz (@NativeSantaCruz) July 10, 2023

“I thought it was a unique one-off,” Woodward said. “But now there’s been three incidents that I’ve captured in the last three days.”

Although some surfers he photographed seemed to enjoy the otter’s antics, others were a little freaked out. None of them was injured, but the otter damaged at least one surfboard, and Woodward said the encounters he witnessed were “scary.”

“These animals look cute and cuddly, but they are extremely strong and vicious when they want to be,” Woodward said. “Surfers are coming out of the water terrified.”

In one viral video posted on Instagram by Joon Lee, the creature can be seen mounting the back end of his surfboard, biting into it and chasing him off the front end. He tried to discourage it by flipping the board over, but the otter continued trying to climb on it. Lee posted photos of deep bite marks in the board afterward.

“Had an interesting weekend,” Lee deadpanned in his Instagram post.

The rogue otter is believed — based on a distinctive identification tag — to be Otter 841, a 5-year-old female with a tragic family history of rescue and relapse.

A Santa Cruz surfer had found her mother, Otter 723, abandoned in 2016 as a seven-week old pup. Wildlife officials took her to the Monterey Bay Aquarium where she was cared for and released back into the wild the following year, said aquarium spokesman Kevin Connor.

But Otter 723 was seen approaching kayakers, paddle boarders and boaters, some of whom had fed her squid and other fishing bait, Connor said. So she was recaptured in 2018 and found to be pregnant. She was taken to an otter research center at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where she gave birth to Otter 841 — our feisty gal, he said.

Both animals then were sent to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Once Otter 841 was weened, she was released into the ocean, Connor said. Her mother, Otter 723, was sent down to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, where she’s now known as Millie, he said.

But it wasn’t long before Otter 841 developed a rap sheet of her own. In the late summer 2021, Connor said, she was seen pestering kayakers and boaters.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said she was also seen with a pup of her own in May 2022. By September of that year, she was showing aggressive behavior toward surfers and boaters.

State wildlife authorities and aquarium experts “hazed” the troubled Otter 841 to discourage her from interacting with people, and there were no further incidents reported for the remainder of the year.

Apparently, the reform effort didn’t take. Now, she’s back, and authorities say this time Otter 841’s days in the wild are over. Like her mother, once they capture her, she’s headed back to captivity for good.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said that “due to the increasing public safety risk,” a team of state wildlife officials and Monterey Bay Aquarium experts “has been deployed to attempt to capture and rehome her.” The sea otter will be examined by experienced veterinary staff at Monterey Bay Aquarium. Then federal and state wildlife officials will work with Association of Zoos and Aquariums institutions “to find a long-term home for the otter.”

There are now about 3,000 southern sea otters since they were protected under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s as well as the Marine Mammal Protection Act and California state law. Connor said captive breeding of sea otters is prohibited, and all aquarium exhibit otters are rescue animals that wildlife authorities say cannot live in the wild.

Wildlife authorities and aquarium staff go to great lengths to avoid letting otters develop attachments to people or associating them with food, Connor said. To feed captive otters intended for release, they wear shapeless black ponchos and welding masks.

Woodward, whose images posted to social media drew widespread attention to the otter incidents, said Otter 841’s return to captivity is probably for the best.

“It hasn’t hurt anybody yet, but we’re afraid that’s going to be the next step,” Woodward said. “If she ends up biting someone, she’ll probably end up being destroyed.”