“What’s that in the water over by that log?” said a woman
squinting out the side of the pontoon boat at a small brownish shape
protruding from the choppy waters of Rest Lake.
“I think it’s just a stump sticking out of the water,” said her
husband, quickly dismissing the brown object.
The woman produced a pair of binoculars to study the supposed
stump more carefully. “Look, it’s moving! It’s a muskrat. No look.
You really ought to check this out.” she said, beckoning with a free
hand while keeping eyes glued to the binoculars and the scene in the water
below. “It keeps diving down under the water and then coming back up again, and
its body is really long. I think it’s an
otter!”
At idle speed we carefully navigated the pontoon boat a
little closer to the sleek, mocha brown colored animal. It was indeed an otter, and not just
one. There were three otters playfully
arching out of the water and diving below to find food.
One of the otters came up from the water
below with a fish in its mouth and swam toward a log sticking out
into the water from the shore. There on
the log, it began to tear the fish into bite sized pieces.
River otters consume 2.5lbs of fish, crayfish, amphibians, mussels, snails, and aquatic insects each day. These members of the order Carnivora belong in the Mustelidae family along with weasels and badgers. Unregulated trapping and habitat degradation in the late 19th/early 20th century nearly eradicated river otters from large portions of their historic range in North America. In 1915 the seasonal harvest was discontinued in Wisconsin for a few years and the river otter population began to make a comeback. Now these playful animals, nicknamed waterdogs, are found in many rivers and lakes in our backyard. They are a welcomed sight on our Rest Lake pontoon tours and Manitowish River paddles.
- Heather Lumpkin, Research and Monitoring Coordinator
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