River Otters in Lake Herman? Yes!
The most beautiful areas of Benicia are the waters of the Carquinez and the accompanying shoreline and hills. But another gorgeous area of the city is Lake Herman, which many residents, particularly those who live downtown, do not know as well. Some may have never even been there.
That’s too bad; it’s a nice spot for fishing, walking, and bird-spotting. Across the road from Lake Herman, in a stand of eucalyptus, is a bald eagle nest. I watched in amazement one day as America’s national bird took off from a bare tree limb on a hill overlooking the lake and glided across the sky before disappearing into the blue. Swans can be seen scooting across the calm waters in spring. Cormorants, ducks of various kinds, and egrets white as fresh-fallen snow are also frequent sights. I once saw a gray heron with its spindly stilt-like legs snap a little wriggling fish into its mouth on the shoreline.
But the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my walks around the lake is something I could not believe I was seeing: a river otter.
What? A river otter in an inland lake? How is that even possible? How did it get there?
One of my sightings occurred at the same time as a Benicia couple, Bob and Mary (sorry, I never got their last names), was walking by. They shot pictures as an otter came up out of the water like Daniel Craig emerging from the ocean onto the beach in Casino Royale. Another question: What is a river otter doing on land?
To solve these and other mysteries, I called Megan Isadore, the executive director of the River Otter Ecology Project, the leading river otter research and conservation organization in the Bay Area. She is an expert on river otters and although the organization is based in Forest Knolls in Marin County, she knew plenty about otters in Lake Herman. “How did they get there?” I asked.
“My guess is they trotted up there from the strait,” she said with a laugh.
River otters can trot? Yes, apparently so. “They’re very agile on land,” she explained. “They spend more time out of water than in it.” They walk, run, and climb trees and cliffs. It’s not unheard of for otters to run 25 miles between watersheds. “People see them walking on the street,” she added.
Not only that, these “very strong, very fierce” carnivorous beings will take on and eat leopard sharks and other small sharks, as well as pelicans. We do not have sharks, as far as I know, in Lake Herman, but people do walk there with their dogs. The birthing season for otters is late winter, which means that there are potentially little otters toddling around at this time of year. They’re being taught how to hunt, fish, and dive. As everyone knows with bears and other animal species, you never want to get between a mother and her young. That goes for dogs too.
Sulphur Springs Creek is a slender stream that feeds into Lake Herman during the rainy months. It merges with the lake in the marshy area to the west of the park on Lake Herman Road. When trying to figure out how otters got to the lake, my guess was that they traveled down the Sulphur Springs waterway.
River Otter by Debbie Fier
Nope, that isn’t the case.
From her office in Marin, Isadore clicked on a map on the River Otter Ecology Project website and could see very clearly that the lake is about two miles from the Carquinez Strait. Between those two bodies of water is a small marsh. River otters love almost any sort of water in any sort of place—“puddles, ditches, salt, brackish, fresh”—and they probably use this little watering hole as a way-station in their travels between the Carquinez and the lake.
There have been “lots and lots” of sightings in and around Lake Herman, said Isadore, and this is a very good thing.
River otters are what she calls “an indicator species.” Meaning that when they’re doing well, it is a sign that other aspects of our natural environment are doing well, too. I have spoken to people worried about the mercury levels in the fish in the lake. While this may or may not be a concern for human consumption, it does not seem to bother the river otters, who feast on the fish there.
The Ecology Project offers a program it calls “Otter Spotters;” Benicians may find it a fun and interesting thing to do. If you happen to see an otter, at Lake Herman or anywhere else, go on the project’s website, record the sighting, and if you take a picture of the event you can post that too. Otter Spotters are doing this all around the Bay Area and California, and it’s now expanding across the U.S.
All this crowd-sourced information coming in from all over—providing glimpses of otter activities, habitat, diet, travel patterns, interaction with other animals—is really making a difference in terms of science, research, and preservation efforts. At one time, river otters were regarded as a “non-occurring species” that had essentially disappeared from the Bay Area. That is no longer the case. They’re coming back slowly. We can feel good as a community that river otters call Benicia home too.
Award-winning Benicia author and journalist Kevin Nelson writes a weekly Substack column, Tilting West.
Feature image: River Otter Swims by Carlos Porrata
