JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Ron Eby spent 20 years in the Navy before he retired from his role as a commander. But after a while, he got bored, so he signed up for a new covert mission.
RON EBY: You go out there in the middle of the night, park, turn the lights off, kind of hide.
SUMMERS: And look for otters - that's right, not enemy warships but threatened sea otters - as a volunteer with the Elkhorn Slough Reserve in Moss Landing, California. As part of our series Here to Help, KAZU's Elena Neale-Sacks went otter spotting with Eby.
ELENA NEALE-SACKS, BYLINE: It's a cloudy spring morning as we head out into Elkhorn Slough. We're riding in a very quiet electric boat. As soon as we get going, we're surrounded by wildlife.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEA LIONS BARKING)
EBY: Look at all the sea lions here.
NEALE-SACKS: The water is calm and blue. In addition to a pile of barking sea lions, birds and seals weave through the tall eelgrass near the marshy banks. Then after just a few minutes, the main attraction.
EBY: There's the otter right in front of us.
NEALE-SACKS: A furry, brown southern sea otter splashing around in the estuary. Twenty years ago, scientists thought otters typically lived in the ocean. But Eby and his friend, Robert Scoles, weren't so sure.
EBY: We would see things that didn't fit what they were saying.
NEALE-SACKS: Like otter footprints and scat on the Elkhorn Slough shore. And that made them curious. They just started volunteering here, and they wondered, why were there so many footprints if the otters mostly just visited?
EBY: After all my time in the Navy and Robert's time as a sheriff, you kind of like to check things out.
NEALE-SACKS: So they did. That's how they ended up on their covert nighttime mission. For the next two years, twice a month, Eby and Scoles staked out the otters overnight. No one had ever monitored the animals like this. The pair discovered that many of the otter scientists thought were visiting the estuary were actually residents. And the otters did something called hauling out. That's when they scoot out of the water and onto land to rest and warm up.
EBY: And we found that otters here in Elkhorn Slough were healthier by far than all the otters along the coast.
NEALE-SACKS: They don't have to worry about predators. And food is abundant.
EBY: So that really was a breakthrough.
NEALE-SACKS: All their monitoring changed scientists' understanding of otters. For example, they realized that the estuary, which is quiet and undeveloped, unlike a lot of California's coastline, gave the otters more opportunities to haul out. This discovery led to other research showing that not only do otters thrive in estuaries, but they're part of an important food chain that helps the rest of the ecosystem thrive, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEAGULLS CALLING)
NEALE-SACKS: As we head back to the dock, as if on cue, Eby points to an example of his body of work - a furry, brown blob on the shore.
EBY: That's an otter hauled out on the marsh.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
NEALE-SACKS: Back at the dock, we meet up with Kerstin Wasson, the reserve's research coordinator.
KERSTIN WASSON: I've worked with so many amazing volunteers, but I've never met one quite like Ron Eby.
NEALE-SACKS: She credits him with starting the sea otter monitoring program, which now has 30 volunteers.
WASSON: He's such a generous man and loves to mentor the other volunteers and infects them with his enthusiasm for the sea otters.
NEALE-SACKS: Eby, who's now 79 years old, says every time he goes out to look for otters, he still learns something new.
EBY: And that's what makes it thrilling.
NEALE-SACKS: And it's something he says he wants to do forever. For NPR News, I'm Elena Neale-Sacks in Moss Landing, California.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLO SONG, "SUMMERTIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.