GardenBanter.co.uk - otters raid nursery for fish

I'm surprised they haven't had trouble with any other predators such as the
herons! They've installed electric fences around the ponds, but what about
winged death from above?!

Crafty perpetrators won't be outsmarted
06:09 PM PDT on Friday, August 27, 2004

By GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News

SILVERDALE, Wash. - Owners of a Kitsap County landscaping nursery are adding
up the damage. They say they are victims of some late-night larceny.

And as King 5 Environmental Specialist Gary Chittim shows us, it seems the
crafty perpetrators won't be outsmarted.

Anywhere you go on the sprawling Clear Creek Nursery, you hear water -
gushing fountains, bubbling ponds, cascading streams.

Maybe that's what first attracted the criminals.

Otters got about 50 of the mature koi.

"They worth about a thousand dollars each," said Danielle Rodgers.

But they were just getting started. They also hit the trout pond or what
used to be a trout pond for some 200 fish.

Nursery workers took action and installed electric fences around the ponds,
and moved the surviving big koi to pens inside the secure fish house.

But the otters rose to the challenge.

"They cleaned them out, ate them all," she said.

Baffled workers installed surveillance cameras in hopes of seeing how the
otters got in.

But no luck. The otters were never captured on tape, but they did leave
clues at the scene of the crime. It appears they got inside the walls of the
building by making a hole.

So now each pen is covered with heavy mesh screen and for now it appears to
be working.

The nursery is slowly raising replacement fish but the workers know the
danger still lurks out there.

The elusive attackers may just be waiting for the replacement fish to fatten
up.

A professional trapper has been hired to capture and relocate the otters,
but at this point the traps are as empty as the trout pond.