California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium visitors on Saturday witnessed a rare and unexpected incident of a pregnant wild sea otter giving birth to its young on a rock surrounded by water facility, which is also called as the Great Tide Pool at Monterey Bay Aquarium, as seen in the pic at the end of this post.

As many visitors witnessed the birth of a young wild sea otter, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has released a video which shows the mother otter writhing atop a rock as she labored. (Watch the video embedded below)

In it’s Facebook post, the Aquarium wrote:

It’s not every day you get to watch a sea otter pup come into the world! But when a pregnant wild otter took shelter in our Great Tide Pool Saturday, we had a unique opportunity to see it happen. Our sea otter researchers have been watching wild otters for years and have never seen a birth close up like this. We’re amazed and awed to have had a chance to witness this Monterey Bay conservation success story first hand in our own backyard. Welcome to the world, little otter!

Wild sea otters can give birth in water or on land. As you can see in the video, these marine animals as well as dolphins and whales give birth to its youngs in tail first order. Mostly, because before grooming these babies there are chances that the babies gets drowned. So, as you can see, the sea otter grooms the pup as soon as it comes to the world. This will also help it stay warm and buoyant – “a well-groomed sea otter pup is so buoyant it’s practically unsinkable!”

As in Monterey Bay Aquarium’s words, “Besides keeping the pup afloat, grooming also helps get the blood flowing and other internal systems revved up for a career of chomping on invertebrates and keeping nearshore ecosystems, like the kelp forests in Monterey Bay, and the eel grass at Elkhorn Slough, healthy.”

The region was in Central California and the birth of a sea otter that the visitors all got to view is a rare glimpse of Nature in the raw. As you can see in the image above, there are many stranded rocks along the edges of the facility where this marine animal believed as a safer place to give birth. This place is also very close to the vicinity for hundreds of visitors at a time. There was a slow raining during the birth, which hasn’t affected in any way to the animal.

It began twisting and turning in paroxysms of pregnant labor after a while and the Monterey Bay Aquarium visitors gasped in amusement and amazement at the scene before them. Seldom has such a vision been seen live by so many visitors and the facility team captured the rare moment in a videowith acuity and alacrity. Most of the research staff of the aquarium had seen many things in their lives, but they had never witnessed a live sea otter birth. It was a golden opportunity that the staff and so many visitors got to see on a first hand basis on Saturday.