Ryder the Sea Otter would be very much at home at a seafood buffet. That’s because he is able to use tools to crack a shell and have a snack, a unique behavior for a marine mammal.

“They will take leftover shells or maybe small rocks and they will use that to bang it on other shelled items like crabs to open it up,” Jennifer Rant, Supervisor of Marine Mammals and Birds at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, said.

What You Need To Know

  • Ryder is a 19-month-old sea otter that was rescued off of the California coast after getting separated from its mother

  • It was transported to the New York Aquarium where it will join the two other sea otters there

  • Ryder is a Southern sea otter, also known as a California sea otter

  • In the wild sea otters eat sea urchins and is one of the few marine mammal species to use tools like rocks and shells to open other shells to eat what's inside

Ryder is spending some time in quarantine at the New York Aquarium’s Health Center after arriving there on May 18th, following a long journey from California.

Now 19 months old, the sea otter was found stranded and alone when he was just five-weeks-old near Pismo Beach in California. His mother could not be located.

“When otters are that young, five weeks old, they heavily rely on their mothers for survival skills, so the likelihood of Ryder being able to survive on his own in the wild without a mother, it’s very, very unlikely,” Rant said, who accompanied Ryder on the five-hour-long flight from California to Newark Airport on a FedEx plane.  

After stints at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, Ryder made the 3,000 mile airplane and van journey to Brooklyn.

Once out of the 30-day quarantine, Ryder will get to hang out in a now under repair habitat with other sea otters, nearly 21-year-old Jacob, and 11-year-old Quint. Until then he has a pool to himself, and will get plenty to eat, because sea otters can eat a ton.  

“Sea otters we feed them every two to three hours. They eat on average about 25% of their body weight, so Ryder here eats about 13 to 15 pounds of food every single day,” Rant said.

There’s a lot to learn from Ryder. Once nearly extinct due to the fur trade and still threatened, sea otters are considered a keystone species, which directly affects the survival of other species, specifically because in the wild they eat sea urchins. Without that, sea urchins would take over valuable kelp forests in the oceans, leading to problems.

“Those Kelp Forests and those sea beds, they actually filter carbon dioxide, so they help with climate change,” Rant said.

So get ready to welcome Ryder to Brooklyn. The aquarium hopes he will be on view for everyone this summer.