CONNECTING This rabbit was folded from a pattern generated by the Origamizer, a computer program designed by Tomohiro Tachi of the University of Tokyo for creating complex faceted shapes (note the bunny’s mosaiclike appearance). The program helped spur the recent explosion of origami models. These folded forms are “like a common language,” Tachi says, connecting scientists across disciplines around the world and demonstrating the endless possibilities that unfold when art and science mix.
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Japan leads the world in adapting to a rapidly aging and shrinking population. 59
Japan is altering many aspects of society as its population ages, including such rituals as communal bathing. Jiro Tajima, 88, is rinsed off as he prepares to immerse himself at a Tokyo bathhouse reserved most days until early afternoon for older people to exercise, eat lunch, and enjoy a soak. Japan’s long-term care insurance covers most of the expense. PREVIOUS PHOTO One of the oldest geishas still working in Japan, Ikuko Akasaka, 82, has been performing the demanding traditional art—dancing and conversing with clients—for 64 years. “Every moment I want to learn new things and polish my art,” she says.
Chikayoshi Gonda, 97, cooks dumplings known as oyaki, while Harumi Okubo, 80, crafts them. The restaurant in Ogawa where they work started hiring older people as the mountain village’s population grayed. The average age of its employees is now 70.
An elderly woman pokes her head out of her doorway and peers down the main thoroughfare lined with traditional low-slung wooden buildings. Another advances gingerly along a narrow side lane. A few minutes later, two tiny trucks trundle up and roll to a stop. The area suddenly springs to life. Five orangevested workers emerge and bustle about, setting up traffic cones, handing out shopping baskets, and apologizing profusely for shifting the Tokushimaru mobile grocery a few feet from its usual spot. They ferry groceries from the first truck to the second, which efficiently morphs into a miniaturized shop with fold-out shelves and red awnings. The left side is refrigerated and stocked with individual portions of fish and meat, yogurt, eggs, and other perishables. Produce is on the right; snacks and crackers, at the back. Half a dozen shoppers, all older women, move haltingly around the truck. Miwako Kawakami, a stooped 87-year-old with bobbed hair, hands her cane to a worker In Ibusuki, a seaside city in the southwest, Nga Thi Nguyen and Mien Thi Tran, both from Vietnam, work at Mifuku Suisan, a company that makes dried bonito flakes, a fundamental seasoning in Japanese cuisine. The company’s president says foreign technical trainees like these, who are allowed to stay in Japan for five years, are now indispensable. On an overcast Saturday morning in Iwase, a sleepy port district on the lip of Toyama Bay on Japan’s largest island, the streets are deserted until the appointed hour approaches. 64 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
shrinking over thenextfourdecades. Atthe same time, Japanese people are living longer—87.6 years for women and 81.5 years for men, on average. Except for the tiny principality of Monaco, Japan’s populationisnowthe oldestintheworld. The numbers,though stark, don’t convey how profoundly this demographic shiftis playing out day to day. The increasingly disproportionate mix of more and more seniors and fewer and fewer young people is already altering every aspect of life in Japan, from its physical appearance to its social policies,from business strategy to the labor market,from public spaces to private homes. Japan is becoming a country designed and takes a small basket. She buys leeks, carrots, three onions, and a carton of milk. Kawakami lives alone behind a nearby temple. “There used to be a lot of stores here, butthey’re all gone,” she says. “The vegetable stand, the fish stand—they all closed about five years ago.” She totters across the streetto meet her 86-year-old neighbor, who has come to help carry her groceries. Iwase has emptied out. Its young have left, and those still here grow older. This dynamic is happening all over Japan as the birth rate continues its decades-long decline. The country’s population peaked in 2010, at 128 million. Now it’s less than 125 million and projected to keep A N E W O L D A G E 65
for and dominated by the old. Watch the nightly news, and you’ll hear reports on Japan’s “aging society” as regularly as the weather. Young people caring for family members need greater support. 100-year-old driver steers car onto sidewalk, hits pedestrian. Majority of yakuza in Japan now over age 50. Aging is everywhere. On some train station platforms, there’s a notch in the base of each seat: It’s a place to park your cane. Abandoned “ghost houses” strangled in vines are a common sightin hollowed-out communities like Iwase but also in big-city neighborhoods. Japan’s path foreshadows what’s coming in many areas of the world. China, South Korea, Italy, and Germany are on a similar trajectory; so too is the United States, although at a slower pace. Five years ago, the world reached an ominous milestone: For the first time in history, adults 65 and older outnumbered children under five years old. If Japan is any guide, aging will change the fabric of society in ways both obvious and subtle. It will run up a huge tab that governments will struggle to pay. Meeting the challenge won’t be easy, but the future isn’t necessarily all downhill. Japan’s experience, with its characteristic attention to detail and design, suggests extreme aging—a world in which an increasing share of the population is old—may inspire an era of innovation. In2020, Japan’shealthministry launchedeight “living labs”dedicatedtodevelopingnursing-care robots. Yetin a way,the entire country is one big living lab grappling with the repercussions of a rapidly aging society.In business, academia, and communities around Japan, countless experiments are under way, all aiming to keep the old healthy for as long as possible while easing the burden of caring for society’s frailest. O SAMU YAMANAKA is on a mission to prevent lonely deaths. Severaltimes a week,the 67-yearold doctor leaves his Yokohama clinic to make the rounds of pensioners who live alone in ramshackle single-room-occupancy units in Kotobukicho. The hardscrabble neighborhood sprang up during the postwar building boom to house day laborers and is now home to aging welfare recipients and “peoplefleeing social obligations for one reason or another,” Yamanaka says—alcoholics, the mentally ill, ex-convicts. On one of Yamanaka’s stops, he visits Seiji Yamazaki, 83, a former construction worker. As is his habit, Yamanaka forgoes the elevator and walks determinedly up seven flights of stairs without stopping, carrying the scuffed black bag that belonged to his physician father. His patient lies on a hospital cot, one fist permanently clenched. Aside from the bed, the narrow room holds a mini-fridge, a microwave, a collection of stuffed Winnie the Poohs, and little else. “I’m dizzy,” he tells the doctor. “How’s my blood pressure?” Yamanaka takes the bedridden man’s vitals, assures him he will check his medication, and reviews the visitors log; health aides also come by daily to bring food, administer medicine, and change diapers. Japan’s long-term care insurance system is among the most generous in the world, and Yamazaki’s needs are well covered. Compared with people in other industrialized countries, the Japanese receive far more benefits than they pay for in taxes and premiums. The program subsidizes between 70 and 100 percent of elder care, depending on income. Before the system 66 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
LEF T Hiromu Inada, 89, trains at a gym in Chiba, on Tokyo Bay. He has competed in 66 triathlons since he turned 70. In 2018 Inada became the oldest triathlete to finish an Ironman World Championship. He works out daily, preparing for this year’s competition. “Even if I think something might not be possible, I try it,” he says, “and surprisingly it turns out to be possible.” BELOW Fumie Takino (front) is the founder and, at 90, the oldest member of Japan Pom Pom, a senior cheer squad in Tokyo. For 26 years, she has practiced once a week. “It is important to be yourself and do what you want to do,” she says, “regardless of your age.” A N E W O L D A G E 67
50 km 50 mi Fukuoka Kita Kumamoto Miyazaki Ibusuki NAGASAKI KUMAMOTO FUKUOKA O KAGOSHIMA SAGA MIYAZA Tsushima Iki Goto Is. Koshikijima Is. Tanega O Yaku s u m i I s l a n d s Change in population by municipality, 2010-2020 Increase in population Prefe City Up to 8% decrease 8% to 16% decrease More than 16% decrease 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2021 2030 2040 2050 High-income countries, 28% Middle-income countries, 16.7% Low-income countries, 4.8% Nigeria, 4.3% China, 30.1% Japan, 37.5% 4.9% Japan, 29.8% South Korea, 39.4% India, 15% Italy, 37.1% Italy U.S. United States, 23.6% Percent of population 65 and older PROJECTED 10% 4.1 million people 65 and olde Japanese 1950 population 10 0 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 and older 11.2 mill people 1946-50 One million POPULATION SQ TO THE NEARES Life expectancy at birth Years Fertility rate Children per woman Net migration rate Migrations per 1,000 population* 4.9 2.4 3.7 59.2 Japan Japan 46.5 Japan 84.4 72.8 1.3 2.1 1950 2019 Replacement rate High-income countries World World -0.3 1.5 3.3 -0.7 1950 2019 1950 2019 Postwar baby boom Japan rebounded after the Second World War with a high fertility rate. Its youngest age group was also its largest. Births below the benchmark Since 1974, Japan’s fertility rate has been less than 2.1 children per woman, the level needed to sustain a country’s population. Leading in longevity Healthy habits, along with advanced health care, help extend Japan’s average life span nearly 12 years past the world’s. Limited immigration Experts say xenophobia and strict requirements lower Japan’s admission rate forimmigrants compared with other high-income countries. A country’s population usually follows economy develops. Initially, numbers care drives down mortality. But that g to education, birth control, and job o RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI. SOURCES: PETER MATANLE, UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD; JAMES RAYMO, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; UNITED NATIONS POPULATION DIVISION; JAPAN MINISTRY OF HEALTH, LABOR, AND WELFARE; JAPAN MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS; NASA *BASED ON THE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS MINUS EMIGRANTS CATCHING UP FAST Other countries are also aging quickly, particularly high-income ones in Europe and East Asia. South Korea is growing older at an accelerated pace; the proportion of its population that’s elderly could surpass Japan’s by 2046. ELDER NATION PASTITSPEAK HOWJAPANGOTSOOLD With nearly 30 percent of its people 65 and over, Japan has the oldest population on Earth (except tiny Monaco). Its median age of 48.7 far exceeds the world’s, at 30.2. But as growth rates slow down, many countries are following Japan’s graying trajectory. PACIFIC OCEAN A S I A Korea JAPAN EMPTYING VILLAGES, GROWING After peaking in 2010 at 128 million, Ja in 10 years—a drop of 1.5 percent. Dep and mountainous areas. Over a thousa residents die and younger ones leave
Sendai Osaka Niigata akyushu Yokohama Chiba Hiroshima Kyoto Tokyo Sakai Kobe Nagoya Sapporo Okayama Shizuoka Hamamatsu Ogawa Kanazawa Miyoshi Toyama Nagoro Am Otsu agasaki Nasushiobara Misawa Morioka Matsue Asahikawa Uchiura Bay Toyama Bay Tsugaru Strait Bungo Strait I n l a n d S e a HOK KAIDO GIFU IBARAKI EHIME YAMANASHI NIIGATA NAGANO SHIGA SHIZUOKA KANAGAWA TOKYO NARA AOMORI WAKAYAMA ISHIKAWA IWATE AICHI TOCHIGI FUKUSHIMA YAMAGATA OSAKA HIROSHIMA KAGAWA TOYAMA TOKUSHIMA OITA TOTTORI KOCHI MIYAGI YAMAGUCHI CHIBA SHIMANE AKITA MIE HYOGO GUNMA SAITAMA KYOTO OKAYAMA AKI FUKUI K Y U S H U SHI KOKU H O N S H U H O K K A I D O Sado Okushiri Rishiri Rebun Oki Is. O Shima I z u I s l a n d s ecture boundary Municipalities A m a m i I s la n d s Okinawa Islands R y u k y u I s l a n d s (N a n s e i - s h o t o) S a k i s h i m a I s l a n d s T o k ara Is la n d s Naha Okinawa O K I N A W A K A G O S H I M A SAME SCALE AS MAIN MAP SHIKOKU HONSHU Bonin Is. (Ogasawara-shoto) Volcano Is. (Kazan Retto) Daito Islands Okinawa KYUSHU HOKKAIDO N a n p o I s l a n d s R y u k y u Isla n d s (Nansei-shoto) Sea of Japan (East Sea) East China Sea PACIFIC OCEAN JAPAN Tokyo er 14.9 million 35.8 million 1990 2020 ion born 0 6.5 million people born 1986-90 4.5 million people born 2016-20 n people QUARES ROUNDED ST MILLION Southern outlier Almost a thousand miles southwest of Tokyo, Okinawa’s warmer climate draws many new residents—boosting population levels of all ages. Urban influx Tokyo is Japan’s youngest prefecture, with only 23 percent of its population 65 and older. The megacity’s growth is propelled by migration from otherregions. Graying in the fields Seventy percent of farmers in Japan are 65 and older. Hokkaido has the most farmers of any prefecture. Its fertility rate of 1.2 is one of the country’s lowest. Oldest of all Shikoku is home to Japan’s two most elderly prefectures, Kochi and Tokushima. In each, more than a third of the population is 65 and older. Tapering growth Japan’s fertility declined in the 1970s and ’80s, as women had fewer children. Younger generations became smallerin size. Population in decline In 2020 Japan reported 1.6 deaths for each birth. The number of children under 10 is less than half of what it was in 1950. s a predictable pattern as its expand when improved health growth wanes with better access pportunities for women. CITIES apan’s population fell by about two million opulation is accelerating, especially in rural and municipalities are in decline as older for school and jobs in larger cities.
In the dwindling hamlet of Nagoro on Shikoku Island, 79-year-old Shinobu Ogura (left) cleans the vacant elementary school. The last students stitched dolls in their likenesses; Tsukimi Ayano, a 72-year-old resident, made the principal. She has populated Nagoro, which now has just 25 inhabitants, with hundreds of dolls. Tadao Inoue (top) had 50 cows on his dairy farm in Nasu, in central Japan; now he’s down to one. With age, the work became too hard, but he says that having even one cow to milk keeps him going. Still, Inoue, 84, has decided to call it quits soon. Outside her home in a mountainous hamlet on Shikoku, 91-year-old Toshie Ueno (above) takes a stroll after feeding her 15 cats. She’s the last person in the secluded area. “I am alone here,” she says, “but this is where I live.”
began in 2000, the ailing old would go to hospitals and stay until death. Now they tend to die at home. “In some ways,” Yamanaka says, “we’re the most advanced socialist country in terms of medical welfare.” But the system is strained. There’s already a shortage of care workers; the government estimates the country will need 700,000 more by 2040. Proposed fixes include raising their pay, recruiting retirees and volunteers, promoting nursing as a career, relying on robotics, and— last and likely to stay last—allowing more foreign workers. Immigrants from countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines are working in nursing homes, but there’s a tight cap on the number of visas for skilled workers. Japanese insularity combined with the difficulty of learning the language makes it hard to fill the gap in care workers from abroad. Meanwhile, the cost of benefits is escalating. Social security expenses, which include public healthcare, long-termcare, and pensions,tripled between 1990 and 2022, financed by government debt. “The universal system we introduced has lots of advantages, andpeople areusedto it,” says Hirotaka Unami, a senior aide to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “To maintain that, we have to restore the balance between benefits and burdens. Otherwise it’s not sustainable.” The solution, he says, is fourfold: accelerate economic growth, incentivize more women and older adults to work, raise the consumption tax, and curb social security expenditures. “The goal is to have more elderly people be contributors to society rather than receivers,” Unami says. It’s a daunting list. Economic growth can’t be engineered at will. Tax increases are unpopular: Ittook Japan five years to raise the consumption tax from 8 percent to 10 percent. More than 70 percent of Japanese women 64 and younger already work, but mostly part-time because of poor childcare options and financial disincentives, including being paid less than men. The government is trying to raise the retirement age from65, and people areworking longer. In2021,more thana third of Japanese companies let people work past 70; in 2016, only 21 percent did. Demographics leave no other option: By 2050, almost 38 percent of Japan’s population is projected to be 65 and over, putting enormous pressure on the labor force to support them. “I don’t think we’ve got good answers,” says Sagiri Kitao, an economist at the University of Tokyo. “To be honest, it’s too late. Politicians don’t want to talk about reducing benefits.” MO RE THAN HAL F of all municipalities in Japan are now designated as depopulated areas, where thepopulationhasdroppedby30percentormore since 1980. In many, older residents are organizing to adapt their communities to this new reality. A housing development in Yokohama, on the other side of Honshu Island from Iwase, is emblematic of how aging is reshaping Japan from the ground up. At Kamigo Neopolis, 868 detached homes perch atop a steep hill. Daiwa House, one of Japan’s largest homebuilders, opened it in 1974 to house the explosion of young families that followed the postwar baby boom. Designed as a bedroom community for salarymen making the hour-and-a-half train commute to Tokyo, it’s one of 61 “neopolises.” In Kamigo, residents could walk to shops and an elementary school. These days, more than half of Kamigo’s 2,000 residents are65 andolder.The school closedyears 74 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
LEF T As night falls at the Active Biwa nursing home in Otsu, a city near Kyoto, a robot patrols, quietly opening the door of each room to check on residents. If it detects anything unusual, it sends images to alert care workers. Many nursing homes are experimenting with technology designed to reduce demands on staff. BELOW Kazuko Kori, 89, talks to Telenoid at Yume Paratiis, a nursing home in Amagasaki, a city near Osaka. A caregiver speaks through it remotely. The android is being studied as a way to stimulate conversations with people who have dementia. A N E W O L D A G E 75
Osamu Yamanaka, a physician who runs a clinic in Kotobukicho, a downtrodden section of Yokohama, checks on 74-year-old Kiichi Takahashi. He frequently calls on his older patients, many of whom live alone in cheap lodgings, their medical costs covered by Japan’s long-term care insurance system. “They don’t want to be in a home. They’re used to being independent,” he says. Yamanaka, who is 67, plans to continue his work for as long as he can. “I have no reason to stop,” he adds.
RIGHT Toyama, a city on the largest island, has striven to become a more hospitable place to grow old. One key initiative is the Kadokawa Preventive Care Center, which has exercise pools fed by hot springs. Every day, about 250 older adults work out at the facility. BELOW Taira and Ichi Katsuta, 89 and 85, who are happily married, have dementia. They live by themselves in a Tokyo apartment, often telling each other stories that only they understand. In Japan, one in five people over 65 has dementia. 78 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
center’s restroom includes a deep sink reserved for the disposal of ostomy-bag waste, a now ubiquitous fixture in Japan marked by a distinctive icon outside bathroom doors. “We’re thinking about setting up a transportation system to the hospital for people who can’t get around,” says Nobuyuki Yoshii, a 74-year-old retiree and father of three. He moved to Kamigo more than 40 years ago for its easy access to surfing and the then thriving jazz scene in downtown Yokohama, a quick car ride to the north. For decades, Yoshii got up at 5 a.m. to commute to his architectural planning job in Tokyo, often returning at midnight. These days, he heads the machizukuri committee. Anon-sitenursing-care clinic is also high on the wish list. Kamigo is one small example of how Japanese communities are working to enable aging in place. Toyama, a city of more than 410,000 that includes Iwase, is a more ambitious case study in reimagining a city space, one now widely praised as a model. The catalyst was Masashi Mori, who until 2021 was Toyama’s charismatic mayor for nearly 20 years. He traveled the world looking for ideas to accommodate the old. Inspired by light-rail systems in Portland, Oregon, and Strasbourg, France, Toyama installed trams that the elderly ride at a discount and can board without climbing any steps. They get into local attractions for free with grandchildren. The city turned a shuttered school into a preventive-care center that functions as a health club for older adults, with gym equipment, classes, and waist-deep pools, one with a built-in walking path and handrails. “The more people walk, the less they spend on health,” says Mori, 69, now a pear farmer with a thick shock of dyed black hair and “Mr. Mori” embroidered on his shirt cuffs. “You’ve gotto getthem active and interacting with other people.” Mori is proud of Toyama’s work to create a more compact, navigable city. “We took the initiative early,” he notes. In Toyama’s rural areas, close to 40 percent of the population is over 65. They’re served by a gleaming care center that delivers home nursing. “We’re seeing an increase in single sons living with their aging mothers, as well as lots of couples where both have dementia,” says Naoko Kobayashi, one of the center’s three doctors who work to ease the suffering of aging patients and also their exhausted families. “Dying is not an easy thing.” ago. The shops are gone. Weeds have taken over the four parks. Residents joke that “Neopolis,” which means “New Town,” is now “Old Town.” The Aeon shopping center at Kamigo’s train station, an 18-minute bus ride down the hill, has a whole aisle of nursing-care products, such as aprons for use while bathing an elderly parent, disposal bags for adult diapers, odor-absorbing cloths to hang on a bed rail, and bags ofthickening powder, called toromi, that’s used in drinks and soups to help prevent choking. As Kamigo’s population shrank and its inhabitants aged, residents felt physically and socially isolated. A loose network evolved to check up on one another, andthat became a committee called Kamigo Machizukuri, a term for a distinctly Japanese form of bottom-up, collaborative community engagement. In 2016 the group started lobbying Daiwa House to create a central area for shopping and socializing. The result was a single-story buildingwithamini-mart, aproduce stand, five tables with chairs, and a video screen. There’s an outdoor terrace with benches. The A N E W O L D A G E 79
Genyu Daito, 64, the chief priest of Banshoji, a Buddhist temple in Nagoya, prays in an LED-lit ossuary that highlights niches when they are selected by an electronic ID card. Innovative burial options are becoming popular as the tradition of family tombs declines.
half, which can fold into a wheelchair. At more than $10,000, though, it isn’t cheap. Other devices include a lavender-and-white bathtub that looks like a cross between a giant Easter egg and an isolation tank. A person in a wheelchair gets steered into the tub and sprayed with soapy foam from all sides at the push of a button, followed by warm water. But a fullbody soak is a cherished Japanese ritual that nursing homes try to provide. Yume Paratiis prefers a rotating chair lift that gently lowers residents into a tub. When Takeo Okuzono, 85, is immersed, he reclines into the bath and closes his eyes. “I’m sleepy,” he mumbles. Sompo is working to make nursing care more efficient. In one ongoing study, workers in 10 Sompo homes collect data from “smart bed” sensors that detect whether residents are asleep, in bed but awake, or out of bed. The technology enables 150 workers to check on 500 residents remotely instead of visiting every room at twohour intervals, according to Albert Chu, Sompo’s chief digital officer. Sompo now uses the wired pads in nearly all its homes. “There are empty wings in care homes because they can’t hire enough people,” Chu says. Robotics can help—and the Japanese government subsidizes their use—but they’re not a panacea. Only a fifth of the nursing homes in Japan use any type of robotics, according to a 2020 survey, and primarily for monitoring and communication rather than helping lift, bathe, and interact with residents. E V E N I N D U STRI E S N OT E X P L I C ITLY focused on nursing care are tackling “aging society” problems. In stark contrast to the incremental pace of national fiscal reform, companies throughout Japan, from conglomerates to start-ups, are experimenting with gusto. Some big companies are devising incentives to keep seniors active in ways that are equal parts marketing and corporate social responsibility. Rakuten, Japan’s e-commerce giant, launched the app Rakuten Senior in 2019. It rewards steps walked with points that can be used toward purchases, such as trial music lessons. Hitachi partnered with the nationally funded Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES) to create a “social participation encouragement” app that aims to lower the cost of nursing care by keeping people active. The app measures outdoor activity and ranks itin four categories,from The city has had less success dealing with the empty “ghost houses” that no one wants, especially those in which someone died alone. There are more than eight million of them around Japan. Laws are slowly changing to enable local governments to fine and publicly report delinquent property owners to shame them. It took Toyama five years in a drawn-out process to raze just three houses, barely making a dent in the more than 7,000 that are abandoned in the city. AT Y UME PARATII S , a pristine nursing home in Amagasaki, near Osaka, a robot called the Hug carefully transfers 98-year-old Kotoyo Shiraishi from her wheelchair to her bed. Padded armrests gently squeeze and support the tiny woman, who wears fleece pants and cushioned slippers. Staff at the 116-resident home say the Hug enables aides to do lifting and lowering tasks solo instead of in pairs. The nursing home industry, naturally, is ground zero of the living lab that is Japan. The Hug is one of 20 technologies that Yume Paratiis is testing, from room monitors to communication robots. The latter include Telenoid, which has nubs for limbs and a realistic but expressionless face. It talks via a care worker who operates it from a distance. Telenoid wears an orangeand-white onesie and matching hat. “This is a boy, right?” asks 89-year-old Kazuko Kori, who tells it to sing her a song. Some residents open up to it, staff members say; others are turned off. Hidenobu Sumioka of Kyoto-based ATR, who helped create Telenoid, concedes that it’s not for everyone, but he envisions a future where robots play a social role for people in nursing homes: “I’d like to use them to form more of a community, the way people used to live.” Among the most prominent companies focused on aging is Sompo Holdings, one of Japan’s top insurance companies, which started acquiring nursing homes in 2015. Sompo now owns around 400, making it one of the largest operators.The company is also the only business running one of the eight living labs; the others are overseen by research centers. Sompo’s Future Care Lab, in Tokyo, houses two spotless testing rooms tricked outlike nursing homes on steroids. Motion sensors on the floors and walls detect falls and send alerts to caregivers’ phones. A high-tech bed made by Panasonic has a mattress that splits down the middle so a patient can be rolled onto the outer 82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Japan’s creative responses to its aging citizens may become a source of inspiration as the world grows older. Sarah Lubman studied Japanese literature, lived in Japan, and has traveled there regularly over the past 15 years. Noriko Hayashi focuses on documenting social issues. She is based in Tokyo. innovation were envied around the world until the Lost Decade, a long stretch of stagnation that began in the 1990s. Although the country remains a digital laggard, Japan’s creative responses to its aging citizens may become a source of inspiration as the world grows older. “You see next-generation talent thinking about aging as a big opportunity,” says Jin Montesano, a senior executive at Lixil, which sells bathroom and other housing products. One of Lixil’s newer items is a shower that dispenses cleansing foam from two adjustable bars that lower to wheelchair height.Increasingly focused on aging in the home, the company is encouraging employees to come up with more ideas. “Age tech” is also beginning to be seen as an opportunity for Japanese start-ups. The amount of venture capital in Japan is comparatively low but growing. One VC funding recipientis Tokyobased LifeHub, which is developing a wheelchair that can raise its user to a standing position and can ascend stairs and escalators. “Wheelchair users want legs—healthy legs,” says Hiroshi Nakano, LifeHub’s co-founder and CEO. Start-ups are also taking on the most intimate nursing tasks. Yoshimi Ui, an outgoing 33-year-old engineer, invented the Helppad, a mattress-odor sensor that detects and tracks excretions to make toileting care more efficient. She runs her company, called Aba, out of a small two-story house near Tokyo. Ui grew up with an ailing, severely depressed grandmother at home and was troubled by her suffering. That motivated her to marry engineering know-how with social impact. Ui says that her Helppad, which is being tested in Sompo’s Future Care Lab, is used at about a hundred Japanese nursing homes. Both LifeHub and Aba envision international sales. Aba, whose website proclaims, “Live well, die well, build the future,” is getting inquiries from South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Japan’s present challenges are our collective future. Just as no one wants to dwell on getting old, Ui says, most people don’t give nursing care a second thought until a parent becomes ill and the burden suddenly falls on them. She wants to change that mindset. Her vision, she says passionately, is to “make the world a place where there’s nursing-care support everywhere.” j beginner to expert. It also recommends events to attend and pushes evidence of the benefits of social participation to users. Hitachi says it’s in discussions with 70 businesses and municipalities about partnerships that would link the app to elder-focused services. Yuji Kamata, who leads the Hitachi team that developed the app, notes that the data will also benefit JAGES, which does national surveys every three years; now the information will be digitized at a lower cost and provide real-time results. The app is free. Hitachi hopes one day to sell the anonymized data. Even Daiwa House, spurred by Kamigo’s residents, formed a new division, called Livness Town Project, to adapt 10 more of its planned communities for aging. “We’re not doing this to make money. It could be unprofitable,” says Koji Harano, who runs Livness. “But it has social value. It helps our brand.” He hopes the company will market its aging-related housing expertise overseas. Other services have emerged to address the ripple effect of solitary deaths.In2020 more than 4,200 people over 65 in Tokyo died alone. Many companies now insure owners of rental units against the risk of someone dying and going undiscovered on their properties, addressing the growing reluctance of landlords to rent to older tenants. Such policies cover the loss of rent as well as the cost of cleaning. Thousands of companies now specialize in residential deep cleaning after a solitary death, a fate likely to become more common in Japan given that more than one in four adults 65 and older lives alone. Japan’s economic prowess and industrial A N E W O L D A G E 83
B Y C Y N T H I A G O R N E Y P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R A L P H P A C E A N D K I L I I I Y Ü Y A N At once calm and agile beneath rough surf, a young sea otter glides through California’s Monterey Bay, looking for mussels. The diving power of these mammals suits their enormous appetites; while foraging underwater, they typically find food in a minute or two. RALPH PACE SEA OTTERS ARE THRIVING IN POCKETS ALONG THE COAST FROM CALIFORNIA TO ALASKA—BUT NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY. W H A T ’ S N O T
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A female tucks paws beneath her chin as she dozes in a quiet Monterey Bay kelp patch. “I refer to their cuteness as their publicity problem,” says Sea Otter Savvy head Gena Bentall, a biologist whose organization gives kayakers and other onlookers guidelines for sensible behavior around wild sea otters. Smitten otter-watchers sometimes paddle too close, or even give chase, trying for the cutest photograph. RALPH PACE
A sea otter pup peruses one of the bay’s giant kelp fronds, foraging for crabs or snails to carry to the surface for a meal. Pockets improvised from loose skin under their armpits make fine transport storage. Next stop: the seabed, to search for mussels, clams, and urchins. RALPH PACE
the way sea otters do when they’re panicked or indignant or calling for their kin. (Think of a gull’s cry, but sharper.) She had dark eyes, deep brown fur, and a radio transmitter implanted in her belly. She was 16 months old, a sea otter adolescent, and unsettling events had so far marked the whole course of her life. Abandoned as a newborn, lifted into a truck by rescuers, bottlefed by black-cloaked humans, and raised by a sea otter foster mother in an outdoor aquarium pool, 820 was one small part of a long ecological experiment—an atonement, of sorts, for the massacre of her species more than a century ago. So she was in a box. The box was on the deck of an inflatable motorboat. She scrabbled her paws against the box floor and walls. “We’ll see how this goes,” Karl Mayer said. It was a late summer morning, and Mayer and his colleague Sandrine Hazan were animal care specialistswithCalifornia’s MontereyBay Aquarium, the gray structure receding in the fog as Mayer gunnedthe boatintodeeperwaters.Inside the aquarium, a crowd was already forming Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sandrine Hazan, her shape and smell disguised, feeds a rescued sea otter pup. These “Darth Vader” suits help prevent juveniles from associating humans with comfort or food once they’re returned to the wild. CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES THE SCRUNCHED FACE OF OTTER820 PRESSED AGAINST THE GRILLE OF HER CARRYING BOX, AND SHE WASSQUEALING, 90 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer Kiliii Yüyan’s work documenting human communities and the natural world since 2021. ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY RALPH PACE AND KILIII YÜYAN IMAGES TAKEN UNDER U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE PERMITS 37946D AND 37085D
Lar 25% of total length Flat tail Round tail 40% Purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus Whales and seals developed blubber of years. Sea otters evolved only with and have different but ingenious ada Sea otters have strong hind limbs and webbed feet, which frees their paws for finding and grabbing food on dives. River otters rely more on full-body undulation. Kelp forests in California’s Monterey Bay recovered after urchin-eating otter populations rebounded. Fish stocks also recovered; kelp beds often support fish nurseries. Sea otters have voracious appetites for bivalves and other invertebrates, especially clams and sea urchins. Without otters, overabundant urchins can decimate kelp forests. Great white sharks sometimes attack otters—which they rarely eat—mistaking them for seals. It takes regular grooming to maintain an insulating and buoyant layer of air in dense otter fur. In kelp forests, sea otters cling to seaweed as an anchor to avoid drifting while they sleep. SURFACE SLEEPING COAT CARE OUT OF BALANCE IN BALANCE STRATEGIC STRENGTH KELP FOREST FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, CHRISTINE FELLENZ, AND EVE C SOURCES: JAMES BODKIN, BIOLOGIST EMERITUS, U.S. GEO Sea otters, with the animal kingdom’s thickest fur, can spend their entire lives in water; river otters, their distant cousins, spend twothirds of their time on land. For sea otters to maintain this marine lifestyle— thriving in frigid seas inhospitable to their furry mammal relatives—they must constantly produce and conserve body heat. OCEAN NEWCOMERS SUITED FOR THE SEA
25% Rock Clam rge webbed feet NORTH AMERICAN RIVER OTTER Lontra canadensis 34 lb max 4 ft, 6 in max SOUTHERN SEA OTTER Enhydra lutris nereis 100 lb max 4 ft, 10 in max 1.4% 3.9% of body weight Sea otter River 14% otter Daily consumption as a share of body weight HAIRS SHOWN ACTUAL SIZE Fur density 900,000 hairs per square inch 2% of body weight 12% 450,000 hairs per square inch Underhairs Guard hairs Underhairs Skin Muscle Air layer Guard hairs Air layer, 1/5 in Skin Air bubbles Matted underhairs r for warmth over tens of millions hin the past three million years aptations to keep warm. Long guard hairs flatten down and block water from a lower layer of scaled underhairs. When grooming, otters mat, or felt, their underhairs together to trap air. Air trapped in underhairs insulates against cold ocean waters. Minimal body fat Loose flaps of underarm skin can store food and favored rock tools. Large lungs add buoyancy at the surface and provide a store of oxygen to the circulatory system during foraging dives that can last nearly eight minutes. Sea otters use rocks to dislodge prey, then swim to the surface to smash shells and eat their catch. Sea otters conserve energy because they float; river otters must swim to remain at the surface. STAYING ON TOP TOOL TRICKS Sea otters eat large quantities to feed a strategically inefficient metabolism. Their mitochondria—the energy centers in cells— continuously emit heat to keep their bodies warm. FELTED FUR LUNG POWER BODY LIKE A FURNACE CONANT, NGM STAFF. MESA SCHUMACHER OLOGICAL SURVEY, ALASKA SCIENCE CENTER; RANDALL DAVIS, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Ketchikan Sitka CALIFORNIA OREG. WASH. B.C. ALASKA (U.S.) U N I T E D S T A T E S C A N A D A MEX. R U S S I A JAPAN N O R T H A M E R I C A A S I A Prince of Wales I. Vancouver Island Baja California Amchitka I. Pribilof Commander Is. Is. Sakhalin A l e u t i a n I s l a n d s K u ri l Isla n d s Kamchatka Pen. A R C T I C O C E A N Sea of Be r i n g Se a Okhotsk P A C I F I C O C E A N Halibut Cove Monterey Bay San Francisco Bay Prince William Sound Historic range of sea otters North Pole 500 mi 500 km Russian Enhydra lutris lutris 7,500 (Population in 2012) Northern Enhydra lutris kenyoni 109,500 (2021) 3,000 Southern Enhydra lutris nereis (2019) There may have been as many as 300,000 sea otters before the rise of the global fur trade in 1741. By 1911, they were nearly extinct, and the first legal protections were put in place. Many populations are steadily growing today. DEADLY TRADE, PROMISING REBOUND Pups are so buoyant they can’t dive until they’re two months old. The three subspecies are categorized by geographically separate populations. Biological differences are small; estimates are based on regional surveys. COUNTING OTTERS short to protect vulnerable pups from eagles and other predators. SINGLE MOMS MAP SOURCES: JAMES BODKIN; EKATERINA OVSYANIKOVA AND OTHERS, MARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, 2020; MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION; U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; FISHERIES AND OCEANS CANADA
Tlingit fur artist Christy Ruby heads home after a day’s hunt off Prince of Wales Island. As an Indigenous Alaskan, Ruby is permitted by law to harvest sea otters, as long as they are only used for subsistence or for traditional handicrafts—fur clothing in her case. “I don’t take it lightly when I take a life,” Ruby says. “It’s ancestral. It’s in my blood.” KILIII YÜYAN
no such wisdom. By 1911, when a treaty curtailed the international seal and sea otter fur trade, a few sparse clusters were all that remained of the sea otter population that had once ringed the Pacific—between150,000and300,000,fromBaja California in Mexico up into the northern islands off Alaska, Russia, and Japan. Now, in waters off the North American continent, a different kind of human intervention has been helping sea otters survive and spread once again. Are they thriving?Touchy question.Is this a happy ending? Touchier question. What about the latest ideas for hurrying that spread along— reintroducing sea otters to more places they once inhabited, like San Francisco Bay? Raise that question among debating partisans, especially people who make their living catching the shellfish that multiplied when no sea otters were around to eatthem, and, well, brace yourself.It’s complicated, figuring out how tough, carnivorous predatorsfitinto aworld that changedwhile they were gone, and amid this collision of opinions about Enhydra lutris there was something comforting aboutthe precision ofthe morning’s task: Help otter 820 get safely back to sea. Mayer quieted the engine, studying the gray-green water. The rescue sea otters at the Monterey aquarium are numbered rather thannamed,to keepsentimentincheck;theplan is to return them, if possible, to the wild. Otter 820 arrived at the facility’s intensive care unit— someone phoned in a beached-pup sighting; rescuers drove out to scoop her up—between otters 819 and 821. Today’s try at releasing her was a second attempt, as a few months earlier she’d failed the first: Mayer and Hazan transmitter-tracked her as she wandered about, ate too little, kept losing weight. When they finally brought her back in, she was so wasted she slumped without protest into their net. “We restored her to normal weight and health,” Mayer said. “Now we’re trying again.” He nodded at Hazan, who pushed 820’s box to the edge of the motorboat, tipped it down, and threw open the door. A N E W B O R N S E A O T T E R weighs about five pounds, resembles a fur pillow with eyeballs, and for the next few months needs a mother for everything—not just food around the glass-walled sea otter tank; from the perspective of the tank’s residents, the human species must sometimes appear as one endless lineup of goofy smiles and raised cell phones. A couple of undulating laps, a little nose-rubbing with the paws, a quick session of Bang Plastic Ball Against Rocks—everything seems to provide extreme amusement for the bipeds on the other side of the glass. Pop a whiskery head out of the water and pick a couple of gawkers to flirt with: happy mayhem, guaranteed. There are semi-rational explanations for people’s ardor at the sight of sea otters, and you can hear experts tick them off: 1. Sea otters are tool users; they pick up appropriately shaped stones, roll over, and position the stones on their stomachs as shellfish-smashing devices. 2. They’re among the world’s smallest marine mammals, and they swim on their backs, which is weirdly entertaining to watch. 3. Something about their faces, the fur, a furry little animal being graceful in the sea… And here the experts tend to give up, yielding to the obvious. “Whenpeople askme aboutthem, I have to be very professional, with my game face on,” Hazan told me. “But when no one’s around, we definitely use the c-word.” Cute, she means. So relentless is sea otter cuteness that people who work all day with them, while not immune to it, can find it exasperating. The notion that wild sea otters hold each other’s paws,for example, to keep from drifting apart: Winsome but wrong. (Sorry.) Some years ago, two sea otters at an aquarium were photographed floating paw in paw;those images have kept up a robustinternet presence, but there’s no reliable evidence that sea otters regularly do this in open water. It is true that they hug their pups while swimming on their backs.Itis also true thatthey sometimes converge into “rafts,” giving the impression of companions gathered for a pleasant group float. Sea otters can be ferocious, though. They’re predators: carnivorous and tough. They have jaws and teeth that crush clamshells and rip the guts out of spiky littler animals. Their nearextinction story is a brutal eco-drama that commences in the 1700s, when Russian sailors exploring the Aleutian Islands learned what Indigenous Pacific coastal people already knew: Sea otters are covered with the thickest, most luxuriant fur in the world. The coastal people also prized those pelts, but they hunted at an otter-sustaining pace;thenewhunters possessed 98 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
a sea otter,” Mayer says. “They’d follow you around. You couldn’t lose your sea otter pup if you wanted to.” Trial and error taught the humans too. Wild sea otters must not associate the sight and smell of people with comfort or food, so the bottle-feeders improvised what they called but also the most basic instruction in staying alive. The adult males don’t stick around to help, and the pups don’t instinctively understand how to grab shellfish off the seabed, crack open a crab’s back, or stash smashing stones under their armpits as they swim. They have to be shown how to groom constantly, fluffing their coats and blowing air into the underfur; sea otters have no blubber, and the famous fur is a thick insulation system for keeping them warm in the water, where they spend most of their time. In the Pacific a sea otter with matted fur or skin wounds can quickly freeze to death. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has been experimenting with sea otter recovery ever since it opened in 1984, with its focus on the region’s marine life. Some of the last surviving sea otters off California lived not far from Monterey; scientists call these southern sea otters, to distinguish them from the northerns near and above the Canadian border. Before long, reports of injured or stranded southerns set in motion a remarkable sequence of rescue and rehab at the new aquarium. In-house veterinarians performed emergency otter surgery. One area, closed to the public, became a sea otter neonatal ward. Then, because even healthy pups still had to learn how to grow up, staff members began stepping in as substitute mothers. Mayer no longer works at the aquarium, but during his early years there as an animal scientist, his duties included some all-nighters on the aquarium’s sea otter waterbed, soothing and bottle-feeding an anxious pup. He would carry a pup into the bay with him, a weight belt over his wet suit, and demonstrate diving for shellfish while his pupil watched from above. He used his teeth to crack the shells of live crabs—more parentalstyle demonstration—while floating on his back. He put shells on his chest and pounded them with rocks. “We’d essentially model what it was to be Darth Vader disguises: black mask, gloves, dark poncho to alter the human shape. Eventually,to minimize even more the contact between pups and people, the aquarium’s biologists decided to try having the resident adult female sea otters take over the motherly finishing school. These were rescues that for various reasons had been declared unsuitable for release back into the wild but might still intuitively understand what to do—how to foster a pup, teach it to forage and stay warm, prepare it for meeting others in the sea. No aquarium had ever tried such a thing. But the first of the surrogate mothers (as the biologists labeled them) inspected their new charges, clearly grasped the task at hand, and gotto work. That was more than 20 years ago. The population of southern sea otters is currently estimated at about 3,000, an encouraging if still modest advance toward true recovery;they are scattered up and down the middle third of California’s coast, with 100 to 150 living in the protected SEAOTTERS HAVE NO BLUBBER, AND THE FAMOUS FUR IS A THICKINSULATIONSYSTEM FOR KEEPING THEM WARMINTHEWATER. W H AT ’ S N O T T O L O V E ? 99
While their mothers feed together from a shallow mussel bed in Monterey Bay, staying close enough to keep a watchful eye, these two pups meet for a playdate: They cavort, chase each other, and take turns giving shoulder rides. RALPH PACE
have. And some people are not.” Case inpoint: commercial shellfish harvesters. “Like setting off a nuclear bomb,” a dive fisherman named Jeremy Leighton told me one afternoon in a waterfront café, describing seabeds he’s seen in the wake of hungry-sea-otter foraging. “Everything getting wiped out, in a radius, as they expand.” Leighton lives in Ketchikan, Alaska. He was born in Alaska, as were his father and grandmother. His catch includes geoduck, a large, burrowing clam, and sea cucumber, another shellfish. His territory is Southeast Alaska, currently the global epicenter of peoplehostile to sea otters. It was here that I heard them described as “an infestation” (a Haida tribal leader) and “a Monterey Bay slough the aquarium has used as a prime release spot. Wild sea otters now share that inlet with surrogate-raised sea otters and their descendants, all of which seem to have figured out how to yank crabs and clams from the mucky bottom. Where smashing rocks are scarce, they improvise by using empty clamshells or by bashing hard-shelled prey against boat hulls and dock pilings. They’re surviving. They’re raising their young. They’re satisfying their prodigious appetites. And here, problematically, is the 21st-century sea otter conundrum: their appetites. S E A O T T E R S E A T A L O T . The daily intake of an adult sea otter can weigh about a quarter what the otter weighs; lactating mothers need even more. They eat shellfish, and the about-a-quarter calculation doesn’t include the shells. (For one 60-pound adult sea otter, picture about 15 pounds of shellfish meat.) Within their Pacific surroundings, sea otters are a keystone species, the term biologists use for animals or plants that are especially important to the ecosystems in which they live. Those giant otter appetites, plus their choice of prey, can maintain—or restore—a healthy equilibrium in their part of the sea. Among the shellfish sea otters eat, for instance, are urchins. Urchins eat kelp, so without the otters around to hold their numbers down, grazing urchins can take down whole forests of kelp. And scientists are learning that kelp forests, along with seagrasses that flourish when sea otters are present, play their own crucial roles in marine resilience. Kelp tangles make protective nurseries for baby finfish, increasing the number and variety of adult fish. Seagrasses filter out water contaminants and lock carbon into the sediment. “Sea otters have huge effects,” says research ecologist Tim Tinker, a University of California, Santa Cruz adjunct professor who is one of the world’s leading sea otter experts and has spent decades studying both the northern and southern populations. “That’s why understanding them is so important. When they’re removed from an ecosystem or put back into an ecosystem, everything changes. And that’s disruptive. Some people are going to like the effects they 102 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
On a commercial dive boat, Jared Ellis finishes hauling up sea cucumbers harvested by boat owner Craig Thomas. As shellfishhungry sea otters have spread throughout other parts of Southeast Alaska, they’ve so far mostly stayed away from this spot, Kasaan Bay. But wandering sea otters are now sighted here from time to time. “We see it as a matter of time,” says Ellis, who works in construction in the summer but hopes to become a career dive fisherman. “It’s scary, for sure.” KILIII YÜYAN disaster” (a commercial crabber, glaring at the water off his boat). Also this, from a man who’s fished the area for almost 40 years: “Actually one of the most destructive things on the planet.” To be fair, that last description was prefaced by “cute and fuzzy and cuddly and all that stuff, but actually …” The speaker was Ed Hansen, who works with a group called the Southeast Alaska Fishermen’s Alliance; his wife, Kathy, is executive director. They appreciate the popular appeal, in other words. But their version of the modern sea otter story is one of good intentions gone awry—because unlike their southern relatives, northern sea otters in recent decades have multiplied prolifically in waters from which they had once vanished. A 2021 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service–supported study putthe Southeast Alaska count at more than 27,000 sea otters. Canadian scientists estimate that another 8,000 live along British Columbia’s coast. Why the huge difference in comeback numbers, northerns versus southerns? The reasons start with human intervention more than a half century ago, when the U.S. government was holding underground nuclear tests on Amchitka Island, a thousand miles west of mainland Alaska. Amchitka is part of the Aleutians, and although that’s the very archipelago where the hunt to near extinction began, by the mid1960s, some of the world’s remaining wild sea otters could still be found there—remnant colonies, biologists called them. After shock waves W H AT ’ S N O T T O L O V E ? 103
A sea otter grouping, like this cluster in Alaska’s Halibut Cove, is called a raft. 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 shellfishharvesting humans. “It’s a long-term relationship we are in,” says scientist Tim Tinker. “Humans and sea otters have to basically re-figure out how we coexist.” KILIII YÜYAN
the kind of Alaska Native sea otter hunting and skin sewing the law does permit—though it’s been a challenge to build a viable sea otter fur industry, given the many restrictions as to how pelts may be obtained and used. He’s also intrigued by the situation off the coast of his hometown, Sitka: In the early 2000s, advancing sea otters were out there hoovering up the shellfish—crabs, abalones, gumboot chitons, urchins—that locals had harvested for generations. Recently, though, the sea otter numbers have dropped in Sitka Sound, and the shellfish stock is improving. Is this because of the Native hunters, prompted by that cultural initiative, who have made it a point to shoot their otters in those waters? Not enough to wipe sea otters out of the sound, but enough to send a warning to stay away? “Otters are smart,” Miller says. “We didn’t have to take them all out.” Tribal knowledge and scholarly research support the idea that sea otters learn to recognize and avoid danger areas and thatIndigenous people may have once used site-specific sea otter hunting to protect designated shellfish areas. There’s no question that they did live amid an abundance of shellfish and sea otters—long ago,to be sure, before there was refrigerated transport plus a global appetite for the animals that sea otters eat. Now Miller is part of an ongoing meeting of Southeast Alaska “sea otter stakeholders,” as they label themselves— fish and game officials, tribal members, scientists, and commercial fishermen—all trying to work out a modern plan for sharing resources with a keystone animal that humans came so close to wiping out. “It’s important for us to relearn how to coexist with sea otters,” Tim Tinker says. “Humans had learned that. And then for 150 years arriving Europeans learned how not to.” No specific proposals have emerged from the Alaska discussions, but there are people watching closely from the western edge of the lower 48, especially around San Francisco Bay and the Oregon coast. Both regions are under serious study as reintroduction sites—shellfish-rich waters that once supported thousands of sea otters and could perhaps do so again. And in both places, healthy sea otter colonies might improve the water quality and plant life while delighting tourists. The local dive industry and crab fisheries’ wary response: We’re part of the ecosystem too. from the first test blast in 1965 killed hundreds of these otters, Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials began an extraordinary series of relocation airlifts: Over the next seven years more than 700 sea otters were pulled from the Aleutians and Prince William Sound, flown east, and lowered into the water in ancestral Pacific Northwest sea otter territory. The otters released off Oregon didn’t make it; by 1981, they’d scattered or died. The otters put in off Washington State hung in along one stretch of coastal waters, their numbers growing steadily but slowly. In Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, though, the relocators set sea otters into the coastline’s multiple bays and inlets, which turned out to be ideal protected settings for rapid—some Alaskans would say explosive—population growth. The females had pups (seven to 10 in a lifetime is typical). The pups grew up and had pups. The expanding colonies moved into more bays and inlets, looking for food. H E R E ’ S W H A T T H E 1 9 7 2 Marine Mammal Protection Act says about killing any such animal, including a sea otter, in the United States: You can’t. Criminal offense. You can’t “harass” a marine mammal, either. There are a very few exemptions, including one that applies to Alaska’s Native people, who may hunt sea otters for “subsistence” or for “authentic Native articles of handicraft and clothing,” as in skinning them and using their pelts only in the ways the law details. This means that if you’re watching sea otters eat your family’s livelihood, the MMPA says there’s nothing you can do about it, Alaska Native or not. (Canada has similar prohibitions, but with no exemptions for its Indigenous First Nations.) “The MMPA wasn’t written for ever dealing with overabundance,” says Mike Miller, a Sitka Tribal Council member who chairs Alaska’s Indigenous People’s Council for Marine Mammals. “But if you look at their overall impact on ocean health,there’s a positive side to otters too. There’s got to be something close to balance someplace.” Sea otters have occupied quite a bit of Miller’s time since the turn into this century. He’s part of a cultural initiative to teach and encourage 106 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Cynthia Gorney is a longtime contributing writer. Ralph Pace specializes in underwater and environmental photography. Kiliii Yüyan documents how cultures around the globe relate to nature. her back to health again, and this time 820 was formally pronounced unsuited to life in the wild. She lives these days in a rock-landscaped outdoor pool at SeaWorld San Diego, where she and her poolmates—all rescue sea otters, like 820—“hit it off,” says Shirley Hill, an animal care specialist who’s worked for decades with “We are not necessarily dead set against sea otter reintroduction,” says Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission executive director Tim Novotny, who has joined ongoing talks with the Elakha Alliance, a group of conservationists, scientists, coastal experts, and tribal leaders exploring another attempt at returning sea otters to the state. “The concern is, you don’t want to put a floating time bomb of furry crabeaters in the water. Goats are cute, but nobody wants 5,000 of them in their backyard.” Elakha is a Chinook word for “sea otter,” and the alliance’s president, a former Oregon coastal planner named Robert Bailey, says he and his colleagues are working hard to learn from the Alaska experience—to regard sea otters as “everybody’s treasures,” as he puts it, while trying to craft reintroduction proposals that might keep human shellfish harvesters from losing too much of their catch. In any case, the sea otters would have to be placed strategically, Bailey says, and their population monitored closely. “We want to minimize that impact,” he adds. Where mightthese sea otter transplants come from? Among other sources, the populations that include surrogate-raised otters like 820. A carefully monitored reintroduction site could become another release spot for the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s rescue sea otters, and two other West Coast aquariums are developing Monterey-style programs to pair surrogate sea otter mothers with rescue pups. Those programs will need appropriate release spots too. And here it would be nice to be able to report that 820 was last observed swimming serenely in Monterey Bay, smashing crabs on her stomach and so forth. Alas, that’s not what happened.In the tradition of her species, 820’s story turned into a just barely survival saga: A few weeks after that second release, she slid onto a nearby dock, wounded and emaciated. She’d been bitten by a shark. She had parasites. Rescuers scooped her up again, the vet staff nursed sea otters. “She’s just got a great disposition.” Her name, also, is no longer digits. A public poll renamed her Nova, and Hill says that despite the way Nova sometimes tries to cadge extra food from the others’ meals, she appears to have won over even the pool’s oldest sea otter, who tends toward aloofness. The last time I saw her, Nova was cruising around juggling a plastic tube stuffed with bits of abalone and octopus frozen in ice. The attendants toss these into the pool so the otters can bash them around to loosen the meat and then dig it out, and Nova had evidently decided to toy with hers first, balancing it on her stomach, pushing it with her nose, banging it against the glass. People in the gathered crowd pointed and smiled, and a man lifted the small girl beside him so she could get a better view. “So cute,” he said. j THE 21ST-CENTURY SEA OTTER CONUNDRUM: THEIR APPETITES. A 60-POUND ADULT EATSABOUT15POUNDS OF SHELLFISH MEAT A DAY. W H AT ’ S N O T T O L O V E ? 107
The mud-brick walls of the 19th-century Grand Mosque of BoboDioulasso in Burkina Faso are waterproofed every year with shea butter. But mud often can’t hold up to the intense rains climate change brings. BY PETER SCHWARTZSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOISES SAMAN West African architects look to the pastto beat future heat. FROM MADE MUD 109