May 22, 2026 — Otters and California’s sea urchin and lobster fisheries are a bad mix, and fishermen are taking legal action to protect themselves from the marine mammal.
“We’ve filed two petitions,” says Nate Hotes, a lawyer with the fishermen’s advocacy organization Pacific Legal Foundation.
“There are two timelines,” says Hotes. “The first is the delisting of the otters under the Endangered Species Act. Back in 2003, the Southern California sea otter population was 3,090 animals above the threshold for listing. We have been trying for the last ten years to get them delisted, and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hasn’t moved.”
To provoke action by the FWS on delisting, Hotes reports that the PLF filed a petition on April 24, 2026, requesting that the California otters be delisted. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “But they’re supposed to respond to that in 90 days.”