"We ended up at Land's End (on the Homer Spit) and found ourselves at least five to 10 otters floating around that area foraging, so we knew that was going to be a good release location. And sure enough, Corky took off to the water. He spent zero time as soon as he left the cage. He was in there swimming and grooming and diving and doing everything an otter should do," said [Tim Lebling, stranding coordinator at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward].
Corky was found on the highway in poor condition Nov. 29. At first, SeaLife Center staff didn't know what to think of the report.
"He was actually on the highway so when we got the call we thought, ‘OK, is this a river otter or is it a sea otter?' But U.S. Fish and Wildlife folks were there, so we knew at that point, ‘Yes, indeed, we have a sea otter on our hands,'" he said.
"We went through the whole gamut of possibilities, could he have been picked up and dumped on the highway? We don't think he was raised by anybody. A lot of the theories we ruled out."
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