Swimming teacher Lynette Bellin had been swimming for three-quarters of a mile along Lake Tahoe’s picturesque rocky northern shoreline this week when something that felt like a pair of hands grabbed her leg and yanked her underwater.
“I thought it was human,” Bellin said. “It was so strong.”
But her assailant had paws, not hands.
“I turned around and that’s when I saw the otter, and it immediately started attacking me,” Bellin recalled after the river otter attack Sunday near Incline Village.
As she tried to swim to safety, the animal clawed her legs.
“When it approached my torso, I would try to push it away to deflect it, but every push seemed to make it attack more viciously,” said Bellin, of Reno, who teaches swimming safety to kids.
Wounds to the legs of swimming teacher Lynnette Bellin after an attack by a river otter in Lake Tahoe, California on Aug. 30, 2026 (courtesy of Lynnette Bellin/ISR Reno Tahoe)
Scrambling to escape the “relentless” attack, Bellin tried to climb out of the water onto some rocks, but she slipped off. She swam toward another rock, “and the otter continued to attack my legs as I tried to flee,” she said.
After she managed to get up on a rock, “the otter climbed up and started attacking me on the rock as well,” she said.
The animal only retreated when she reached about 10 feet above the lake. But it kept circling, she said.
Bleeding from her legs, face and hands, Bellin pondered her route out. “There was no way I was getting back into the water,” she said.
She climbed granite boulders to reach a bike path, and walked back to the beach where she’d left her belongings.
“I have been swimming in Tahoe for over two decades and have never seen anything besides minnows and crawdads,” she said.
At the hospital, Bellin received 38 stitches and multiple rabies shots.
Because river otters have been known to carry rabies, doctors routinely give rabies shots to victims of otter attacks.
A Nevada Department of Wildlife warden spoke to Bellin at home after the attack, then went to the scene and searched for the otter with local police, but didn’t find it, said department spokeswoman Kenzie Margiott.
The department does not plan to look further for the animal. “It would be tough for us to do so — they all look so similar,” Margiott said.
River otters are common in many U.S. waters, thanks to decades-old conservation measures including the federal Clean Water Act, said Megan Isadore, executive director of the Marin-based River Otter Ecology Project.
But attacks, Isadore said, are “very unusual.”
Such incidents appear to occur when river otters feel threatened, or believe their young are in danger, Isadore said.
“They’re very fierce in protection of their young,” Isadore said. “This time of year, river otter pups are still sticking pretty close to mom.”
If the otter that attacked Bellin was a mother who believed Bellin was too close to her pups, “that could’ve caused it,” Isadore said.
Margiott from the Nevada wildlife department said river otters may also attack if “they think you’re in their hunting territory.”
Unlike the sea otters in California’s coastal waters, which can weigh up to 70 pounds, river otters tip the scales at a maximum of about 25 pounds, but have very strong jaws and claws, Isadore said.
“They’re a predator — they eat all kinds of prey from fish to water-going birds to rodents, snakes, crayfish — they love crayfish,” she said.
Anyone swimming in a lake or river who spots an otter in the water “should swim to shore just to be on the safe side,” Isadore said. The animals are curious, but, “if something frightens them and they bite you, it’s not a good outcome,” she said.
“River otters look cute and cuddly and adorable, and watching them is one of the most fun and rewarding things you can do out in the field. Swimming with them? No.”
In August 2023, in the space of three days, river otters attacked two swimmers near Lake Tahoe in separate incidents. Broadway actress Crystal Finn of New York described what she believed was an attack by several river otters in the Feather River that left her with bite wounds to her lower body. Two days earlier, a woman swimming in Serene Lakes near Soda Springs was treated at the same hospital as Finn — Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee — for 10 to 15 bites, some requiring stitches. Both women received rabies shots.
Wildlife department spokeswoman Margiott highlighted the rarity of river otter attacks.
“We really don’t want to discourage people from recreating and swimming in Lake Tahoe,” she said. “If you do see a river otter or any other wild animal, we just ask that you give it space.”
Bellin, owner of water-safety-training company ISR Reno-Tahoe, said she’ll be out of the water for 10 days after the attack while her wounds heal.
“But I look forward to getting back in the water with my swim students and will return to swimming in Lake Tahoe, because it truly is my favorite place in the world to swim,” she said. “I will just choose a different route.”