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Northern sea otters forage in a group near rocks off of Yukon Island in Kachemak Bay, Alaska. A snow-covered Mount Whittier is in the background. The genders tend to split up by raft: all females, with pups and often one territorial male, or all males. Together they groom and rest between bouts of the vigorous foraging that frustrates shellfish-harvesting humans. “It’s a long-term relationship we are in,” Tinker says. “Humans and sea otters have to basically re-figure out how we coexist.”