Aquarium lends helping hand to otters. (News from Zoos).

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the sea otter exhibit is prominently located near the main entrance. That's no surprise; these furry animals, who enjoy eating shellfish while floating on their back, are one of the Bay's selling points for nature lovers.

But what most Aquarium viewers fail to see is what is taking place just off the coast. A kayaker and a diver swim slowly back toward the aquarium. With them is an abandoned sea otter pup. The sea otter cannot see the diver's face or hands because they are completely covered in a black wetsuit. The diver goes down to the ocean floor and picks up prospective food. The otters are expected to emulate. Once back ashore, the otter is hustled into an enclosed tank with no view in or out. There is no human contact; a lone camera is aimed 24 hours a day at the animal.

"We're trying to help them return to the wild," says Ken Peterson of the aquarium. Positive interaction with humans may interfere with the otters' behavior in the wild.

These efforts are part of the Sea Otter Research Center, operated by the Aquarium and the Hopkins Marine Institute, which is part of Stanford University. Since 1984, the Center has rescued more than 200 adult otters and stranded pups. It has returned about 25 percent of its captures back to the wild.

The Center also helped re-establish a population of otters at San Nicholas Island in the Channel Islands and two weeks ago did its first magnetic resonance image (MRI) to establish a baseline for the species. The otter used for the MRI is suffering from domoic acid poisoning--a frequent problem among rescued otters--will eventually have to be euthanized.

The population is improving, Peterson said, and the center's effort is slow-growing. More otters die from complications caused by biotoxins and domoic acid poisoning than are returned to the wild. Rescue animals are usually too sick to recover or it is too late for them to respond to antibiotics. But the Sea Otter Research Center staff members are still hopeful. "Our typical day is nothing happens," Hawkins said. "That's what we're hoping for. But then, we got 13 otters in one month once." [Source: Keith Lair, San Gabriel Valley Tribune]