Sea otters are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear and marine debris, with ghost gear causing drowning and injury that wildlife rehabilitation programs address for individual animals.
Sea otter entanglement in marine debris represents a direct, preventable welfare harm to individual animals in an already vulnerable population. An otter entangled in ghost gear that cannot forage or groom suffers progressive deterioration in a species that requires constant food intake due to high metabolic rate. Drowning in sunken gear causes acute welfare harm. Ghost gear removal from known otter habitat directly prevents these welfare harms for identifiable individuals. The relatively small California sea otter population means each entanglement case matters significantly for both individual welfare and population conservation goals.