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Pamela Sain, age 14, of Vale, North Carolina, for her question:

What does the sea otter eat for lunch?

The charming sea otter is a born snacker and when one mini meal is finished he starts thinking about the next one. He helps himself to snack after snack all through the day anal sometimes wakes up for an extra one or two during the night. It's hard to separate this series of mini meals into breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the menu items he selects are meat, live meat from the salty sea.

He enjoys life off the sunny shores of California, where recently the fishermen set up a loud complaint against him. The fishermen think the sea otter are taking more than their share of the abalone that the fishermen gather for the market. What's more, they claim that he also rips holes in their nets. His agile, four foot body weighs around 80 pounds and he is a strong underwater swimmer. He can tear his way through most nets with no trouble at all.

However, most fishermen feel somewhat embarrassed about complaining. The sea otter wears an exquisite coat of thick silky fur    for which his kinfolk were hunted until they were thought to be extinct. Then a few showed up and strict laws were passed to protect them. For years there were none in the abalone fishing realm, but as their numbers multiplied they returned. Most people don't want to change the conservation laws that still protect him, which is why the little nuisance is an embarrassment.

When a sea otter surfaces with an abalone, he floats on his back and uses his furry tummy as a table. There, in plain sight of the fishermen, he cracks the shell and leisurely uses his dainty paws to feed himself. Surely the clever character can't be teasing those frustrated fishermen!

So far, nobody has come up with a worthwhile idea on how to preserve abalones from the clever little sea otters. All we can do is hope other items on his diet will become more plentiful and that he concentrates on them. Then he might leave at least some of the abalone for humans    who first hunted him almost to extinction and then passed conservation laws to help him survive.

Sometimes the frisky fellow catches a medium sized fish. More often he dives 100 feet or more to dredge food from the sea bed. He may select a leggy cuttlefish or a plump sea urchin, a clam or a mussel or some other crustacean. He always carries

What does the sea otter eat   for Thursday, August 19, 1971 his snack to the surface, floats on his back and eats mouthfuls from his personal table, his stomach. His mini meal may be abalone or anything else he wants because the law forbids anyone to retaliate.

The handsome sea otter is rated as a super smart animal. Some observers claim that he can use a stone as a tool to open a shellfish. In any case, he has some very clever tricks to hide from killer whales and other hungry foes. When not busy, he hides in beds of floating kelp. When he dozes, he wraps himself in a scarf of floating seaweed to hide his body and keep himself from floating away. The frisky fellow also loves to play. Often he rolles up a wad of seaweed to toss around in an otter type ball game.

 

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