In Reply to: Best place to see Sea Otters in the wild? posted by scottfiji on July 18, 2006 at 19:01:30:

Though it was a while ago, I can't see what would have changed. I was at Cannery Row many years back and found a couple of otters swimming with me. They were hunting and ignoring me. I wasn't that interested in them, but was checking them out. I could see them hunting with their front paws and a few times they had to swim aside to get past me to the surface. They didn't seem to care any and I swam with them for 20 minutes or so.
Rule one. Get there well before the dive classes and all the gangs of divers doing their Monterey Crawl into the area. It gets very busy. That was when the otters left.
Actually I had been assisting a class earlier, but everyone had gone in. I was probably doing long free dives when the otters came. They may have liked that as I didn't see them until they were right with me for a while. I suspect that the area is mostly out of reach to them because it is often infested with divers.
I don't know if that would help you now, but that's what happened then. I was told by a couple other discusted divers that I was fantastically lucky. They had been trying to swim with otters all summer and never got anywhere near that close. They then mentioned that I must be the guy Bob Widman warned them about.
Good luck. They are there. The question is whether they think you should be.
Enjoy the diving, seahunt