In cooperation with California Department of Fish and Wildlife, CCLEAN was awarded a grant from the California State Water Board to perform a comprehensive study of persistent organic pollutants if archived tissues from 227 freshly dead wild southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) stranding between 2000 and 2005 along the California coast between San Francisco and Ventura. For each animal a complete necropsy was performed by the California Department of Fish and Game, providing detailed data on each otter’s age class, sex and nutritional condition, as well as data on the primary and contributing causes of death. Consideration of these data, along with each otter’s stranding location and liver POP concentrations permitted detailed statistical analyses of the spatial, environmental and demographic relationships with the detection of high POP concentrations in sea otters, as well as relationships between elevated liver POP concentrations and major causes of sea otter death.
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