Oregon Aquarium Sea Otter Celebrates Birthday with the Most Fitting 'Cake'

One of my favorite animals to visit in any zoo or aquarium is an otter. They are so playful and adorable, and they don’t seem to mind being observed by humans. Wheres some animals will hide in distant corners of their enclosures, or snooze the day away, otters always seem to be busy doing something or other.

Here we have an otter, Earle, who is celebrating his third birthday at the Oregon Coast Aquarium with a very special—and otter-friendly—birthday “cake.”

In this video, Earle the Southern Sea Otter is seen crunching through a colorful chunk of ice dyed with food-safe colors to make it festive. According to the caption, he loves chomping on ice, and this one holds a special treat—frozen crab legs sprinkled inside. This way, the birthday cake is not only celebratory, but it also serves as an enrichment activity for Earle as he breaks apart the ice in search of the yummy seafood trapped inside.

Related: Sea Otter Celebrating His Birthday at Georgia Aquarium Is Total Party Goals

Earle the Otter’s Journey to Safety

Earle joined the Oregon Coast Aquarium otter raft in the summer of 2021, when he was just a pup. He’d been found a few weeks earlier by rescuers in California, cold and lethargic, with no mother in sight. After rehabilitation in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, he was deemed unreleasable by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and brought to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

It’s one of only a handful of facilities in the country allowed to keep sea otters in captivity. The purpose of these programs is only to provide safe homes for sea otters who cannot, for whatever reason, be returned to the wild.

Sea otters are still a widely threatened species, due to habitat destruction and climate change, which can hurt their food supply, the kelp forests they live in, and cause dangerous algae blooms in the ocean which kill the otters through disease.

Sea Otters in Oregon

Though there used to be many sea otters living along the coast in Oregon, they were hunted to extinction more than a century ago. Their fur, which is known as the densest of any animal on the planet, was highly prized for coats and other clothing.

For a variety of reasons, no attempts to introduce the animals has managed to succeed, even though their population bounced back farther south in California waters. Like all disruptions to environmental balance, the absence of sea otters had a catastrophic effect on lifeforms up and down the food chain. Sea urchins, a favorite food of the otters, flourished, which in turn destroyed the kelp forests that many other animals depended on for survival. Without the kelp forests to live and hunt in, the otters are unlikely to return, so it’s a vicious cycle.

Now, the three male sea otters living in captivity in the Oregon Coast Aquarium are the largest community (or raft) of otters in the entire state. It’s especially strange to think that there are no otters in a state where so many locations are named after a creature who once abundantly roamed its shores.

But until such time as wild otters return to Oregon, you can enjoy the presence of adorable fellows like Earle.

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