Provides an update on the status of Enhydra lutris, the sea otter, since previous reports on the Canadian sea otter population in 1985 and 1987. Information is included on the otter's geographic distribution, protection status, population size and trends, habitat, general biology, and factors limiting the otter population. Concludes with discussion of the status of the species and a proposed conservation designation, with the rationale for such a status.

As preferred prey become scarce, theory suggests that predator per-capita consumption rates decline and predator diets diversify. As a keystone predator, sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are known to have remarkable impacts on their macroinvertebrate prey, however, variation in the magnitude of these effects through time remain less well known. Using a space-for-time substitution, we quantified sea otter foraging behaviour at 5 rocky reef sites that fell along a gradient in otter occupation time (0.1-33 years) on British Columbia, Canada's central coast. As site occupation time increased, sea otters targeted increasingly smaller, more diverse macroinvertebrate prey suggesting the serial depletion of preferred to less valuable prey. We found strong evidence that urchin density and occupation time were important drivers of sea otter per-capita consumption rates on urchins, strongly interacting rocky reef herbivores, well known to drive the distribution and abundance of kelps. In addition, there was greater strength of evidence for prey-dependent over predator-dependent functional response models of sea otter consumption of urchins. These results have implications for nearshore productivity, commercial and subsistence shellfish fisheries and balancing the trade-offs inherent to ecosystem-based management.

The impetus for this volume comes from two sources. The first is scientific: by virtue of a preference for certain large benthic invertebrates as food, sea otters have interesting and significant effects on the structure and dynamics of nearshore communities in the North Pacific. The second is political: be cause of the precarious status of the sea otter population in coastal California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced, in June 1984, a proposal to establish a new population of sea otters at San Nicolas Island, off southern California. The proposal is based on the premise that risks of catastrophic losses of sea otters, due to large oil spills, are greatly reduced by distributing the population among two geographically separate locations. The federal laws of the U.S. require that USFWS publish an Environmental Impact Statement (ElS) regarding the proposed translocation of sea otters to San Nicolas Island. The EIS is intended to be an assessment of likely bio logical, social, and economic effects of the proposal. In final form, the EIS has an important role in the decision of federal management authority (in this case, the Secretary of the Interior of the U.S.) to accept or reject the proposal.

This is the first in a series of baseline marine biological inventories for the Queen Charlotte Islands archipelago including Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve. It focuses only on seaweeds, seagrasses, and marine lichens and begins with an overview of these three types of plants along with their traditional use by the Haida people. Inventory data collection methods are then described and results are presented in the form of species lists and dot maps showing geographic distribution of species. Finally, marine plant issues in Gwaii Haanas management are discussed, including the need for near-shore marine environmental monitoring, kelp forest ecosystem issues (kelp deforestation, the role of sea otters and red sea urchins, kelp forest-associated fisheries), and visitor impacts.