The sea otters are so close you can hear one munching a crab, making a cracking sound like a kid with a bag of sunflower seeds. It's a cool, gray morning near the tiny town of Moss Landing, Calif., and I'm sitting in a flatbottom boat with 15 other passengers, gliding across the waters of Elkhorn Slough. The otters—27 of them in this particular group—seem wholly unconcerned with us. A mother otter nurses her pup; another rolls in the water. Some are brown, some streaked with gold.
