Before last month, a young southern sea otter named Rey would never have imagined she would be a mother. That changed when she met Sunny, a pup – about two weeks old – found orphaned and alone on Asilomar state beach on the central coast of California in February. The pairing went off without a hitch. The two otters now live as mother and daughter at the Aquarium of the Pacific. They arrived at the facility last month, paired together as part of the facility’s surrogacy program that it runs alongside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The program, created by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the 1990s, was launched in Long Beach in 2024. It pairs maternal-age female otters with young, motherless pups who would otherwise not survive on their own in the wild. Megan Smylie, the sea otter program manager, says the operation has since rehabilitated and released nine otters into the wild, with the three others expected to leave by the summer.…