Status of translocated sea otters at San Nicolas Island, California

In the 1970s about 1,650 southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) were restricted to the central California coast (Riedman and Estes, 1990), and a high volume of oil was being shipped through the region. Because of the vulnerability of sea otters to contamination from oil (Costa and Kooyman, 1982; Williams and Davis, 1995) that would likely spread wide- ly along the shore after a large spill (Van- Blaricom and Jameson, 1982), the subspecies was listed as threatened in 1977 under the United States Endangered Species Act.