An orphaned sea otter pup and a young adult female have found each other and a new home in Southern California.
Nor will they live in the forest again. But Long Beach Aquarium officials have the pair’s future in mind.
Ray and pup, Sunny, are making their public debut Wednesday at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where they can be seen in the Sea Otter Habitat inside the North Pacific Gallery.
Both otters were not considered eligible for release into the wild by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because they did not participate in the aquarium’s sea otter surrogacy program, but officials envisioned a role for them in the same program. They see Ray and Sunny as future stand-in mothers.
Stranded sea otters need a mother figure if they are ever to return to the ocean.
The Aquarium of the Pacific is part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Surrogacy Program, where the aquarium’s adult female sea otters act as adoptive mothers to teach rescued pups the skills needed to survive in the wild, according to the aquarium.
Adult female sea otter Ray walks past Brett Long, vice president of animal care at the Aquarium of the Pacific, on Tuesday.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
“Our hope is that once they reach the age of maturity, both otters will become surrogate mothers, so that more orphaned pups can have a chance to return to the ocean,” said Megan Smiley, the aquarium’s sea otter program manager.
When a pup is stranded on the Central California coast, federal and state wildlife officials respond to assess whether it is indeed orphaned, said Brett Long, vice president of animal care for the Long Beach Aquarium. The otter will then go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for eight weeks of critical care. Once stabilized, the pup can be transferred to the Aquarium of the Pacific, where it is paired with an adult female surrogate for approximately five months.
The surrogate teaches the pups to groom, forage and behave like a wild otter, Long said.
Ray and Sunny were paired together to train Ray to be a surrogate mother and help young Sunny learn more skills.
“Ray is showing really good maternal instincts,” Long said. He said being raised by another sea otter rather than a human gives Sunny – like other orphans – the best chance to learn essential skills. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a search Research conducted by the organization over 15 years showed that sea otter pups reared through surrogacy survived just as well as pups reared in the wild.
According to Long, sea otter mentorship is at the forefront of a formal partnership between the Aquarium of the Pacific and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has been rehabilitating sea otters since the 1980s. In 2020, the two institutions agreed to expand Monterey Bay’s sea otter surrogacy program southward. The aquarium prepared for the program and received its first releasable pup in January 2024, Long said. Since then, 10 pups have gone through the program at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
Ray is about two and a half years old. According to the aquarium, she was found stranded as a day-old puppy in July 2023 and spent time at another facility before arriving at the Aquarium of the Pacific in March 2026. Sunny was found stranded at Asilomar State Beach in Monterey County in February 2026 at about two and a half weeks old. The Monterey Bay Aquarium had her stabilized before being transferred to Long Beach, the aquarium said.
After being separated from the surrogate, the pup spends additional time socializing with other juveniles before possible release on the California coast north of Santa Barbara, according to Long.
Emphasizes the importance of a long-term program to return sea otters to their natural habitat is an endangered species. Threats they face in the wild include marine traffic and oil spills. Since sea otters rely on their dense fur coats to stay warm, oil contamination from the spill could be detrimental to their coats and overall ability to survive in cold water temperatures, he said.
According to the aquarium, sea otters are a key species in the kelp forest ecosystem, eating sea urchins that would otherwise eat the kelp. A healthy otter population helps keep those underwater forests intact.
“Every sea otter returned to the ocean can make a difference,” Smiley said. “It is our hope that the rescued sea otters that move here through surrogacy will play a role in continuing to expand that population.”
