The reason why there are so few left is because most of them migrated back home over 200 miles away. Gill and trammel neters have to dipose of there nets properly so that that they don't harm anymore animals and there not aloud to be used 30 fathoms of water from Point Ano Nuevo to the mouth of the Santa Maria River. Every square inch on a sea otter has over 800,000 hairs, compared to a human who doesn't even have 100,000 on there entire head. Sea otters eat about 25 percent of their body weigt in food each day depending of the energy content of the food. That would be like eating over 100 hamburgers a day to a human.
Sea otters sleep together floating on the top of the water.
Which made it easy for early fur traders to trap and kill them. Otters are very clean animals they have to be to keep air pockets in there fur so that they do not freeze to death. In 1968 sea otters would wash up on shore with knife and bullet wounds. At Monterey Bay Aquarium orphaned sea otters are taken care of. They feed them and teach them to dive, forage, and how to crack shells.