Sea otters

On a TV prog shown on the BBC (The Life of Mammals) the presenter, David Attenborough, went snorkelling with sea otters. This looked like a 'must do' thing.

Does anyone on the board know where I swim or dive with sea otters? David was with them in two locations, California and Alaska (I think). California sounds like the better option to me, although it still looked pretty cold .

Any info or links would be appreciated.

There are quite few sea otters in the Shetland Isles but whether you would be able to get close enough to them to snorkle or dive is another matter. They are however no longer very afraid of people so it may be possible.

they are all over the central coast of California, like the Monterey Bay. However, you are not allowed to approch them, I don't know what the distance is off hand, but it is something like 100 feet. But I can almost promise that you will see some if you spend a weekend in the water around here

I had my first sea otter encounter last night on a night dive at Breakwater in Monterey. We had earlier done a dive at Monastery Beach north, and seen two on the surface there, and on our second dive which started at dusk, there were four otters in two pairs at the Breakwater playing on the surface. Two divers exiting the water as we entered said that the otters were being very playful. However because of the no-approach rule, we let them be, but about 2/3 of the way through the dive, one zoomed into the beam of the HID and rolled on his back in about 8' of water and gave us the once-over. I pointed the light away from him, and let my buddy's halogen light up the scene (didn't want to blind the poor guy!). He/she just swam under us, had a look, did a loop and then swam off. Just being curious. It probably helped that no-one else was diving due to the Superbowl coverage

Because of the regulations (and common sense) you can't approach any marine mammals, but sealions will also readily approach and interact.