If you could walk the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Arago in Oregon in the summer, you’d find yourself in the mysterious green depths of a forest of kelp. Look up, and you’d see sunlight filtering through the fronds waving in the current; look down, and you’d see the plants anchored to an ocean floor covered with life. But if you walked a little bit farther, you’d come to a barren clearing, no sign of kelp or much else — just a carpet of purple sea urchin, a creature that is devouring kelp at an alarming rate.
The disappearance of kelp forests is widely felt here; gray whales have changed their foraging patterns, and the red abalone fishery in Northern California closed after swarms of urchins and warming waters destroyed more than 90% of the kelp forests there. In Oregon, a 2024 study by the Oregon Kelp Alliance found that over a 12-year period, the kelp forest off the coast declined by up to 73%, primarily due to an out-of-control population of purple sea urchins, which graze on the kelp. This system is out of balance largely owing to the absence of a keystone species: xvlh-t’vsh, which means “sea otter” in the Athabaskan language of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. For more than 20 years, the Siletz Tribe has been working to reintroduce sea otters.
A 2024 study by the Oregon Kelp Alliance found that over a 12-year period, the kelp forest off the coast declined by up to 73%.
At the end of last year, the Siletz Tribe and its partners got a major boost in this effort: Through the Biden administration’s America the Beautiful grants they received a $1.56 million grant over three years to reintroduce the species to Oregon and Northern California — the second such attempt since the 1970s, when a state attempt at reintroduction failed. The return of sea otters to the coast of Oregon will not only impact the broader ecosystem of animal and plant life, it will also affect a cultural ecosystem as well: The Yurok Tribe, Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians will work together to renew their long relationship with the sea otter once it has returned.
SEA OTTERS HAVE BEEN ABSENT from the Oregon Coast ever since the early 1900s, victims of the voracious fur trade, but their relationship to coastal tribes is long and special. The Siletz and Coos tribes tell of a Coos woman who marries Sea Otter and goes to live with his people in the ocean. Her family and village then find gifts left on the beach for them. That sense of abundance translates directly to sea otters’ cascading impacts on the ecosystem around them, Robert Kentta, an elected member of the Siletz Tribal Council, explained. “There’s a connection there between our tribal people’s understanding of what all sea otters do for the environment that leads to that prosperity,” Kentta said.
In April, for the first time, Kentta saw sea otters in the wild at a successful reintroduction site in Elkhorn Slough in California. The animals frolicked, ate crab and held hands as they slept, forming rafts of furry bodies that gently bobbed up and down in the water. (Their penchant for holding tight to each other is how they got their Siletz name, xvlh-t’vsh.) The Elkhorn Slough reintroduction has shown that sea otters benefit estuaries and sloughs, in addition to near-shore ocean habitat. Healthy eelgrass beds have increased and invasive green crabs have declined because of them. Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey say the otters could be consuming up to 120,000 green crabs, which are also invasive in Oregon, every year.
“There’s a connection there between our tribal people’s understanding of what all sea otters do for the environment that leads to that prosperity.”
But sea otters and kelp forests affect more than the localized ecosystem, said Chanel Hason, director of outreach and community relations for the Elakha Alliance, a nonprofit that works in partnership with tribes, the state and other nonprofits to reintroduce sea otters. “Just because you don’t live by the ocean or live along the Oregon coast, you should appreciate breathing the oxygen in your lungs,” Hason said, noting that oceans produce about half of the Earth’s oxygen, something that kelp plays a large role in. The Alliance has also worked to educate the general public about sea otters and address any concerns that Dungeness crab fishermen and oyster farmers might have about reintroduction.
“We feel a real responsibility to bring them back as a moral obligation,” Kentta said. “But also in the furtherance of climate change resilience, and bringing back the diversity and abundance of species that our ancestors knew.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
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This article appeared in the June 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The return of Xvlh-t’vsh.”
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