Santa Cruz Sentinel: The number of sea otters off California’s coast is down slightly this year, and a dramatic dip in the population of pups has some scientists extremely concerned. “The number of pups was incredibly low, and pups are the future,” said Steve Shimek, executive director of The Otter Project in Monterey. “If you don’t have pups, you don’t have a ton of future.” Annual numbers released Tuesday by the U.S. Geological Survey show that the estimated number of southern sea otters off the …