Nonfiction by Heide Island, PhD, reviewed by Jo Ann Zimmerman
ROMP! A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NATURAL HISTORY OF OTTERS AND WHY THEY MATTER (Tarcher)

a creative book review in the form of a reddit thread

r/Pennsylvania
OddMints
What’s up with the otters?
Anyone else notice you can’t get an otter for your Pennsylvania license plate anymore? I have one on my old Mazda but when we bought our son his car, the otters were gone. All you can get now is some giant salamander called a Hellbender. WTF?

RobinBanks
Fr? That is so wrong.

OddMints
IKR? Otters are just so cute! And a giant salamander? Puh-leez.

MustelID
OMG I just read a book called Romp! A Journey Through the Natural History of Otters and Why They Matter. You would not believe how totally awesome otters are!

GrrrrlzRule
Romp??

MustelID
Yea, that’s what they call a bunch of otters. You know, like a gaggle of geese.

DinoDan
Why did we have otter plates in the first place? I mean, I like ’em, but don’t they live in the ocean? What do they have to do with PA?

Maybeenot
Well, there are river otters, too, but I don’t think we have any of those here.

MustelID
Actually, the author, Dr. Heidi Island, a biopsychology professor, says there are otters in every state except Alaska. Also, they live everywhere in Canada, except Prince Edward Island. Since we don’t have a seacoast here in PA, we have river otters.

TipTopperTom
I know we used to have otters but I heard they’re extinct here now.

LlamaMama
Nope. We still have ‘em here. My BF saw two in the Delaware River!

MustelID
Sure do. But it is true they were almost extirpated (locally extinct) in our great Commonwealth about 80 years ago. Then in the 1980s, the state game commission did a great job of carefully reintroducing them, and now they inhabit every major watershed in PA.

WeResistor
Sounds like a lot of cool facts about otters in that book, but I’m not much of sciency person. Probably too technical for me.

MustelID
Oh no. It’s very “art major friendly.” In fact, it’s really a combination memoir/environmental science book, kinda like The Soul of an Octopus. It’s written in the first person, and Dr. Island tells about her experiences tracking down and studying various romps on Whidbey Island off Washington State.

DinoDan
Maybe I’ll check out this book. Is it just about river otters, or do sea otters appear, too? I saw a cool YT video about sea otters floating off the coast of CA in this bed of seaweed, cracking open mollusks on rocks they held on their bellies.

MustelID
Yup, the book mentions that, too. Sea otters are smart! They were found to be tool-users long before Jane Goodall observed that behavior in chimps. The naturalist Edna Marie Fisher first saw sea otters diving for mussels and opening them with rocks back in the 1930s.
There are actually 14 subspecies of otters (scientists call them Lutrinae), and they’ve been around for 20,000,000 years! And those sea otters you saw in the vid aren’t just super cute—they’re doing a really important job. The stuff they float in isn’t seaweed but kelp, a kelp forest, really.

Kelp is key to keeping coastal marine life safe and healthy, but it was almost wiped out a few decades ago when otter numbers declined. Because otters also eat sea urchins, which chew and eat the base stems of kelp. So the kelp was dying without otters to protect it, which was bad for lots of fish that lay eggs and raise their young in the safety of the kelp forest. That’s why otters are an indicator species; their health influences the health of entire ecosystems.

RobinBanks
I get it. Romp! is more than a romp. Does it say why otters were declining in CA and here in PA?

MustelID
Well, for years otters were hunted for their luxurious fur. Sea otters, for example, have the densest fur of any animal in the world, with 1,000,000 hairs per square inch — about the size of a postage stamp. More recently, human activity has degraded a lot of otter habitats by polluting waterways, draining wetlands, and so on.

WeResistor
Sounds like a pretty depressing book.

MustelID
Not at all! It’s not one of those doom-and-gloom “oh the planet’s falling apart boo hoo” deals. It’s really very hopeful. The book focuses on all the ways otters help the environment. Remember how they’re an indicator species? Well, they’re also a keystone species — one that has an outsized effect on its environment relative to its numbers.

On Whidbey Island, where the author lives and works, river otters sounded the alarm on dangerous levels of PFAs, or “forever chemicals,” that can cause slow development in children, thyroid problems, and even cancer. Otters are at the top of the food chain on the island. Because they have low body fat, otters absorbed the chemicals into vital organs and many died. So even though there are not a lot of otters in that ecosystem, their decline prompted conservationists to take action and clean up the waterways.

WeResistor
Still not getting why they need to be on our license plates. If they’re not endangered now, and people love them so much, what’s the big deal?

TipTopperTom
What, you want a giant salamander instead?

DinoDan
Keystone species. Keystone state. C’mon, it just makes sense.

RobinBanks
Seems to me keeping otters front and center might KEEP them from being endangered in the future.

MustelID
Yea, my main takeaway from the book is how important otters and animals like them are to the ecosystems they inhabit. As Dr. Island says, “Human activities have pushed otters to the brink of extinction, and yet dedicated efforts have pulled them back, one habitat or population at a time. Otters need our vigilance.”

GrrrrlzRule
And I thought otters were just fun guys 😊

MustelID
Oh they’re all about fun. Otters in Ohiopyle State Park here in PA have been observed sledding down snowy hills for five minutes at a time, just for giggles.

They’re also really smart. The author writes that for hundreds of years, smooth-coated otters in the Bay of Bengal have helped local fishermen by herding fish onto their nets. Instead of eating the fish themselves, the otters have learned they get more food by waiting until the fisherman rewards them with fish from the catch. Their ability to delay gratification classifies them as associative learners, aka super smart. I mean, my teenage son still struggles with that!

OddMints
Wow, so otters are not just cute, but smart, helpful, and really important for maintaining healthy waterways. Sure sounds like we should keep otters for our license plates. I say we write to Governor Shapiro and demand they stay!

DinoDan
Yeah, c’mon Josh. You really otter do it!

LlamaMama
Groan

Romp! A Journey Through the Natural History of Otters and Why They Matter by Heide Island, PhD, was published by Tarcher on April 28, 2026.

Jo Ann Zimmerman is a lifelong educator, most recently on the faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she lives with her amazing husband and indifferent cat. She has written for the Georgetown Review, Sportscribe Magazine, and other publications.