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Hannah cut the outboard motor fifty yards outside the surf zone , letting the Pacific swell lift the aluminum skiff as dawn fog clung to the granite bluffs of Point Lobos . Through her salt - fogged binoculars , the undulating canopy of bull kelp appeared deserted , and for several agonizing minutes she feared the winter gales had driven the nursery raft into open water . At nine o'clock the following morning , the regional fisheries commission was scheduled to review the sanctuary boundaries ; should her census fail to document nursing females within the cove , commercial crabbers would immediately secure permission to lay traps across the kelp beds . Not until the swell dipped into a glassy trough did the first dark shape materialize among the amber fronds . What Hannah caught was the brief flash of a whiskered face , followed by the distinctive , metallic clinking of stone against shell . Wrapped securely in ribbons of giant kelp to prevent drifting with the tide , a female southern sea otter lay floating on her back , balancing a flat granite pebble on her chest while cracking open a purple sea urchin . As Hannah adjusted the spotting scope , she saw a second shape nestled against the mother's abdomen : a pup , scarcely two weeks old , buoyant as a cork in its downy natal fur . Rarely has an ecological rebound carried such transformative consequences for an entire coastline . A century ago , maritime fur traders had hunted the California sea otter so relentlessly that naturalists believed the creature entirely extinct . What survived was merely a remnant colony of perhaps fifty individuals clinging to the sheer cliffs of Big Sur . Many biologists had predicted that genetic isolation would doom the survivors ; few do so today . The real significance of their resurgence , however , extends far beyond charismatic appeal . Where otters vanish , herbivorous sea urchins multiply unchecked , grazing relentlessly through the holdfasts of giant kelp until lush underwater forests collapse into desolate , sun - bleached barrens . What the otters accomplish , by feeding voraciously on these spiny grazers , is the rescue of an entire marine architecture . With the canopy restored , juvenile rockfish find shelter , harbor seals regain hunting corridors , and coastal waves lose their destructive force against eroding shores . Some researchers had anticipated an incomplete recovery ; others , none at all . Yet thrive the kelp forest did , its towering fronds filtering the morning sunlight into cathedral columns of jade . Nor should one overlook the broader planetary implications of a thriving kelp canopy . Marine scientists now recognize that healthy macroalgal forests draw down dissolved carbon dioxide at rates rivaling terrestrial rainforests . Had the otters not reclaimed these shallow bays , tons of organic biomass would never have accumulated along the continental shelf . It was not mere sentimentality that justified protecting the species , but the cold calculation of coastal resilience . Seldom does a single creature hold the key to so many interlocking systems .
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