Annual California Sea Otter Census: 2019 Extra Limit Observations Shapefile

The GIS shapefile Extra limit counts of southern sea otters 2019 is a point layer representing the locations of sea otter sightings that fall outside the officially recognized range of the southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) in mainland California. These data were collected during the spring 2019 range-wide census. The USGS range-wide sea otter census has been undertaken each year since 1982, using consistent methodology involving both ground-based and aerial-based counts. The spring census provides the primary basis for gauging population trends by State and Federal management agencies. Sea otter distribution in California (the mainland range) is considered to comprise a band of potential habitat stretching along the coast of California, and bounded to the north and south by range limits defined by combining independent otters within a moving window of 10-kilometer stretches of coastline (as measured along the 10-meter bathymetric contour; 20 contiguous ATOS intervals each) and taking the northern and southern ATOS values, respectively, of the northernmost and southernmost stretches in which at least five otters were counted for at least 2 consecutive spring surveys during the last 3 years. However, a few individual sea otters (almost always males) can frequently be found outside this officially recognized range, and these extra-limital animals are also counted during the census.