An otter pup now in rehabilitation at Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific is playing a big role in the development of the facility’s 2-year-old “surrogate” program.

In partnership with the Monterey Aquarium, which pioneered the surrogate model in the early 2000s, the Long Beach aquarium has paired the new pup, now about 20 weeks old, with a surrogate mother, “Betty,” one of the aquarium’s resident otters.

The idea is that surrogates can teach orphaned babies the skills they will need to survive.

In this case, government wildlife authorities have already determined the otter pup in Long Beach wouldn’t do well in the wild so he likely will be transferred to another aquarium after he turns 1 year old, an aquarium administrator said, freeing up more space at the Aquarium of the Pacific to further expand the surrogate program.

“It went well,” said Brett Long, the aquarium’s curator of mammals and birds, when asked about the match between the pup and Betty, a 10-year-old otter.

“She’s been with the pup since about a day after he got here and they get along very well,” Long said. “She helps groom him, she shares her food — somewhat. She’s not a great sharer.”

The two could be seen in one of the aquarium’s otter habitat tanks beginning Tuesday, Dec. 28.

Betty and the pup could be seen cuddling up together and playing beneath the water’s surface.

By transferring the pup in several months, Long said, it will free up more spaces for adult surrogates that qualify for the program. Adult females are tested for maternal instincts before being paired with a pup in need of rehabilitation.

“That,” Long said, “will give us the capacity to rehabilitate as many pups as we can in the long run.”

Higher success rates, he added, are consistently seen in released animals that have been through a surrogate-based rehabilitation.

The Aquarium of the Pacific, which opened in 1998, has room for six to seven otters and will work with about 14 other facilities that are willing to provide additional housing as the program expands, Long said.

Once the Long Beach pup, who has not yet been named, reaches his first birthday next year — qualifying as a juvenile — he likely will be placed elsewhere.

Southern sea otters, once common along the California coast, were thought to be extinct by the early 1900s, Long said, victims of hunters who killed the animals for their waterproof pelts from the 1700s on.

Their range before that, he said, extended from Baja north along the West Coast and over to Japan.

A remnant population of about 50 animals, Long said, were discovered on the Big Sur coastline in the 1930s when the Army Corps of Engineers were working on Highway 1, which opened in 1937.

Today, the still-recovering population has plateaued at about 3,000 otters, spread from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, Long said.

Eventually, he said, southern sea otters could again move southward. But before that happens, Long said, they are more likely to continue moving north along the coastline.

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The animals are among the more popular attractions at the Aquarium of the Pacific, the curator said.

“They’re cute and fuzzy — and feisty,” he said. “And they’re always just sort of busy doing something.”

Among their more charming moves?

“They like to curl up and float on the water,” Long said.