A Whole Week, Just for Me?

If you can believe it, it’s Sea Otter Awareness Week again! SOAW’s 2026 is Rooted in Resilience:

For Sea Otter Awareness Week 2026, we celebrate the deep connections among sea otters, kelp forests and the natural communities that depend on healthy oceans. Just as the roots and rhizomes of eelgrass beds and the holdfasts of kelp grip coastal substrates, true resilience begins with durable attachments.

The interrelationships between sea otters, their habitats, other wildlife and people create resilient networks that can adapt, recover and thrive amid change. Sea otters have demonstrated a remarkable ability to support the diversity and biomass of kelp and estuarine ecosystems; however, building resilience for sea otters and coastlines in today’s world takes a cohesive effort. This includes enforcing protections, advancing research, increasing awareness and nurturing coexistence. It could also involve conversing with local communities about reintroducing sea otters to areas where they have remained absent since the maritime fur trade hunted them to regional extinction. Reestablishing the sea otter’s keystone role in nearshore environments will likely reinforce the hardiness of those systems while aiding the species’ recovery.

Resilience is also about people. Wildlife conservation requires long-term adaptability, collaboration and persistence. Generating opportunities for dialogue about coastal renovation, including potential sea otter reintroduction, will cultivate informed human communities that can navigate change. Restoring healthy ecosystems through open participation among people and nature-based solutions—with an emphasis on sea otters, of course!—will require a sophisticated, steadfast, integrated approach…one firmly rooted in resilience.

The week is chock-full of events, especially if you live on the west coast of the U.S., but there are lots of remote events, too - check out the calendar here!

Photo via Elakha Alliance