The Sea Otter project was put together by three contributing bodies, Dr. Randy Davis, Fred Weltz and Earthwatch.  Earthwatch is an institute that promotes sustainable conservation of our natural resources and cultural heritage by creating partnerships among scientists, the general public, educators and businesses.  Dr. Davis is a professor at Texas A&M in Galveston.  Fred Weltz is a resident Alaskan who has graciously donated his home to the project until the project's facilities are built on the new site.  Fred also provides the skiffs needed for the research.  The combination of Dr. Davis, Fred and Earthwatch make this project possible.

The project is centered on the observation of activity and habitat of the sea otters specific to Simpson Bay with a projected goal to incorporate the otters of Sheep Bay in the near future.  We observe the activity of the otters and take their pictures.  The pictures are taken with a state of the art Nikon SLR digital camera.  The pictures are uploaded into the computer every night for instant visual access.  The purpose of these pictures is to identify the reoccurrence of the same otter with its position in the bay.  By noting the location of an individual otter, we may find that it has a territory.  The goal is to correlate the territories with the type of ocean bottom that is below them.  The ocean bottom is important to the otter because it is the place where they find most of their food.