Sea Otter Hunting in Southeast Alaska ｜ Our Way of Life

In our culture, this is something that we've done for over 10,000 years. Collectively, as a people, they were hunted and kept out of intertidal zones. What I'm doing is no different than that. Their pelts were used as a means of keeping warm, you know, for clothing, and also as a trade item. Tlingit Ani, what is also called Southeast Alaska, has been the homeland of Tlingit people for over 10,000 years. We are deeply connected to the land, air, and water. Traditional foods are vital to that relationship and sustain our way of life. My traditional name is Kootink. I belong to the Shonkwedi Wolf Clan, and this is our way of life. In the 1960s, about 400 sea otters were reintroduced to this region. Since then, their population has grown to over 30,000. Devastating shellfish populations and threatening both traditional food security and our ecosystem health. Whenever you turn something loose like that, you need to have the mechanism to kind of keep it under control. Not enough otter get hunted to even think about any kind of a balance. I was fortunate to learn skin sewing at a young age, and later, as an adult, my dad taught me how to hunt and skin. Today, with fewer people practicing these ways, we hunt whenever we can, carrying on our responsibility to maintain balance and protect food security for future generations. So we hunt sea otter year-round. The herring just got done spawning. You see a lot of wildlife still hanging around, eating the eggs. All these holes are from sea otters digging. There should be clams squirting everywhere here. I don't see any. If you look in this area here, just solid shells. It's like a clam graveyard. And right here is a fresh dig. See, it's deeper. All this fresh sand is turned up. I've seen it dug up worse than this, but there's still a few here and still a few otter working it. But they've actually dug them all. And look at here. All this, this is fresh here. See all the shells sticking up. But I don't see any holes or no clam squirts, nothing. This whole beach would be lively with clam squirts. Can we shut your sound off, Dad, on your phone? My what? Your phone sound. I saw one. I saw a clam. I saw one. Look how happy Dad is. Since I had moved back, we've never dug clams. Might have been a worm or something. Crazy. I am crazy. So Heather said, we don't get enough sun here. You need to... My doctor told me. You need to take these pills. I have to get your picture. They're really good for you. So I started taking these vitamin D pills. Vitamin D will give you the runs. And it took me two or three months to figure out what the hell was the matter with me. This series is brought to you by WorkSharp. Sharpen anything with a blade. WorkSharp makes it easy to do right. The real magic behind every sharp edge. Just like many people who live here, you know, we went off to college. And we don't have access to higher education here. And, you know, it's kind of the normal part of growing up and going out in the world. And I did that for about nine years. And one day I just knew I needed to be home. So I moved home when I was 28. And upon moving home, I realized I had missed out on a lot of learning and growing when it came to my culture. And that's really when my journey for reconnecting began. I begged my dad to teach me how to hunt. I had not hunted anything. So President Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, which was to keep marine mammals from going extinct. But within the Marine Mammal Protection Act, coastal Alaska natives were still able to hunt and harvest and use marine mammal meat and furs for cultural purposes. But government agencies enforced a blood quantum law, which there's a lot of youth who don't meet that blood quantum requirement. And that means if they see their auntie stretching fur legally, they can't help. They can't learn how to skin a sea otter or a seal. But they can't participate in harvesting or preparing those traditional foods or working with the materials. You're not hiding from what you're hunting. So they know they're being hunted and they try to get away as soon as possible. So you don't have a lot of time. You might have just a couple seconds. You also don't know where they're going to come up out of the water. So you're constantly looking and trying to predict, you know, where they're swimming to. But marine mammals can hold their breath for a really long time. So they could pop up, you know, two, three hundred yards away. Right there. There you go. You want to pick it up, Dad? Yeah. Okay. When we're hunting, we're aiming for the head. And this is the target. As you can see, it's about the size of my fist or an orange. And we try to shoot within a hundred yards. The target's moving and we're on the boat in the swell. And that puts it into perspective, you know, how small this target is. I lay them belly up because their fur holds a lot of heat. If you lay them belly down, they start to spoil really quickly. So I was eight years old. So I made matching regalia for my Barbie. I just tried to make my Barbies look like me. Now we're here in my fur shop, 30 years later. The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires you to convert the pelts to a, they call it a sellable item. I don't think of this as art. I think of it as just a part of our way of life. This is the spot we've been working on for like four years. My side. What's my side? You're standing in the middle. Right or left? Left. I'm going to cut a little piece of this scrap. I'm going to show you what sea otter fur does when submerged in water. So I fully dunk this. Pull the piece of fur out and it looks like it's soaking wet. And then when I part this, that undercoat is dry. It stays clean a lot longer than synthetic materials. And any garment that you have that's made from a quality fur and assembled with care can last a lifetime. This show is brought to you by Can-Am. It's rare to find something that works this hard and still delivers that much fun. When it comes to wheels, this is my favorite way to explore the backcountry. Whole sea otter pelts are highly sought after. And people attempt to buy whole pelts from sea otter hunters. It's a federal offense to sell a whole pelt to anybody who doesn't meet the eligibility requirements in the Marine Mammal Protection Act to obtain one. So remove the paws. Rough around the flippers. And then we're going to start skinning. I'm going to go up this side. And I skin the sea otter flat on the tailgate versus hanging them up. So I don't case them out. Casing them out means, you know, like skinning them like a tube. I skin these flat. When we're done it looks like a rectangle. Makes it easier to flesh and salt and tan afterward. I'm sort of roughing this out. I'm not skinning it really close like I would a seal or a deer. I think this sea otter has been shot before because I could feel like a bullet in its shoulder. And here's the first pelt. I'm going to rinse it off and let it hang to drip to the next one. We use as much of what we harvest as possible. And reduce waste whenever we can. And the usable parts of the sea otter is its fur. And it depends on what lens you're looking through. But in our culture this is something that we've done for over 10,000 years. It's okay for something to be cute and cuddly. And also be able to hunt those animals. I see walls of hundreds of sea otters in all of the intertidal zones. Pods of hundreds. It's discouraging. We are in an area where the sea otters don't live yet. We're looking on the beach for signs of clam squirts. And the tide's low right now. So I'm just going to take a walk down here. And compare the beach on this side of the island versus where I live. There's a hole here. Yeah, this one just squirted. No way. Oh my gosh. I've never seen this. I've never been able to do this. Unbelievable. And in less than five minutes we were able to pick up this many clams. I can't even believe it. Even though I've seen the volumes of sea otter over the past couple days. You think about the efforts we make hunting them and trying to achieve a balance. I feel defeated but I'm not going to give up. I'm going to keep hunting and working towards achieving the balance. So we can hopefully see beaches like this on the other side of the island. And as part of my responsibility to the people who came before me. Even at times where you feel defeated or you feel like you're not making a difference. You just have to keep going forward and that's what I'm going to do.