Now in HD: Elkhorn Slough Otter Cam

Visit the Moss Landing-close sanctuary, and its star mammals, via your screen.

OTTERS IN ACTION: Whatever you happen to be up to during the day -- queuing up at the post office, stopping by the store for a frozen pizza, returning calls you meant to return last week -- there is an otter, at the Elkhorn Slough National Estaurine Research Reserve, near Moss Landing, pursuing otterly errands. We're talking about the sort of daily to-dos that might mirror our own. Nope, otters don't go to the post office, and they don't swing by the market for a last-minute dinner, but they participate in the kind of gotta-get-done to-dos that mirror what all mammals do during an average day. Eating, sleeping, licking their fur -- okay, maybe we humans don't do that, or at least too often -- and the usual desultory but adorable pursuits pursued by the furry superstars of the Pacific. Would 97% of all of humankind -- scratch that, make it 100% -- like to spend an hour or two at Elkhorn Slough, a bustling HQ of all things otterdom, watching otters go to and fro about their everyday business? Yes, that's pretty much fact. Can we all get there, on an average day, what with all of the errands we must take care of and the emailing and the post office and the frozen pizza pick-up? No, we cannot. For that, though, there is a remedy, and it is called...

OTTER CAM: The Elkhorn Slough Foundation has provided people an excellent peep into what is happening at any given moment on the reserve, and it has been a joy. But prepare yourself to level up in the joy department: Otter Cam has now gone HD. Will you see the otters' furry backs in greater detail? The snacks they're munching upon? Will every little wave and blade of grass in the bucolic setting pop out of your screen at you? Truly, being there in person is always preferable, but thank goodness for HD technology. And thank goodness for otters, too. They remind us that we all have stuff during our day to get done, though otters, of course, are a bit cuter as they get check off their to-do list.

WANT TO KNOW MORE... about the foundation and all it does to support the wild and vital area? You can learn and support this otter-filled land, a land that is rich in other non-ottery treasures, as well.

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