Upon hearing this, European traders also headed out to the North Pacific. In 1812, the Russians established Ft. Ross on the coast of Bodega Bay to be used as a center for their fur trade operations in California and as agricultural land. In 1911, the International Fur Seal Treaty saved the sea otters, as well as other marine mammals being hunted for their pelts, from extinction. However, recent events have changed some of these numbers dramatically.
Sea otters are the smallest of marine mammal species.
The former have evolved with sharp teeth for cutting and the latter have developed strong molars for crushing their food. They also note that scientists have traced the lineage of the modern sea otter back to an extinct species called Enhydritherium that lived in the late Miocene in Europe and North America. They are found along the Kuril Islands off of Russia, the Aleutian Islands south of the Bering Sea up to the southern coast of Alaska, and off the coast of Central California. Their numbers have been reduced by heavy exploitation in the 18th and 19th centuries for their pelts. While the exact dispersal routes for the primitive lutrinae aren t known, there are theories as to what those possible paths might have been.