Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific has three new residents — Elle, Bee and Cee — a romp of sea otter pups named as an homage to their new home.

All three pups were found stranded on various beaches in California. Elle, for example, was found at Marina State Beach in June last year at just 10 days old, Bee was rescued from Morro Strand Campground at 3 weeks old in January, and Cee was located at Carmel Beach in January at just 5 days old.

Elle was taken to the Monterey Bay Aquarium after she was found, and there staffers attempted to pair her with a surrogate mother — in hopes of eventually returning her to the wild. But the pairing was unsuccessful — and there were no surrogate mothers available when Bee and Cee were rescued.

Without a guiding figure to teach the young sea otter pups the ways of the wild, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed all three babies unfit for release back into the ocean.

Now, though, the babies have found a new home in Long Beach.

“For the past two years, we have been temporarily housing young sea otters with the goal of freeing up space in the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sea Otter Surrogacy Program,” said Brett Long, the aquarium’s senior director of birds and mammals, “so more sea otter pups have a chance to return to the wild.”

Southern sea otters are a threatened species who play a vital role maintaining our ecosystem.

Purple sea urchins, which massively overpopulated the Pacific Ocean and decimated vitally important kelp forests in recent years as a result of the decline in their natural predators, are a main food source for sea otters.

But the Aquarium, through their partnership with the Monterey Bay facility, is working to help repopulate the Pacific Ocean with sea otters.

(The aquarium) has been building a new area to serve as an additional location where adult female sea otters can serve as surrogate mothers to stranded sea otter pups,” a news release said, “with the goal of release back to the ocean.”