California sea otters face entanglement risks from recreational and commercial fishing gear, with gillnets and crab pots causing injury and drowning in the sea otter range area.
Sea otters entangled in fishing gear face acute drowning risk — as air-breathing mammals, they require regular surfacing that gear entanglement prevents. Survival depends on how quickly entanglement is detected and the animal freed. Otters that survive entanglement may have limb injuries from constriction. The welfare dimension of bycatch mortality in recovering sea otter populations is compounded by the conservation significance of each individual in a small, still-recovering population.