Movement and spatial use patterns of California sea otters

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Abstract
Movement patterns of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) were followed by daily monitoring of 40 individuals with implanted radio transmitters. Otters of all age and sex classes were most often found within 1–2 km of their locations on the previous day. However, individuals often remained within a small area for an extended period and then suddenly moved a much greater distance within a short time period. There were significant differences among age–sex classes, but not months, in the mean monthly distances between successive daily locations and between extreme locations of individual otters. There were significant differences among both age–sex classes and months in the harmonic mean distance deviation. For all three measures, juvenile males tended to move the greatest distances. Adult males tended to be more sedentary than adult females over the short term, but traveled over greater distances in the long term. Individuals within age–sex classes had different movement patterns, and individuals often had different movement patterns during the same month in successive years. Estimates of the area used by individual otters during a single 24-h period (6.9–1166.4 ha) overlapped previous estimates of home-range size based on much longer time periods.

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