How about a pet mob that can catch fish and floating items for the player? They could catch floating items for a player busy on land or at the bottom of the ocean. Two variants could be added to spawn in oceans and freshwater rivers.
Wild otters would be shy like ocelots, but can be lured, fed, and tamed with clam meat (for sea otters) or salmon (for river otters).
To get the otter to fetch specific fish/items and to avoid getting spammed with items the player doesn't want gathered, the player could command the pet by giving (Q key) the otter an item in their inventory. The otter will pick up the item in its mouth and swim off to gather matching items. Any raw/cooked fish item the player gives the otter will tell it what kind of fish to attack.
Otters are playful animals in real. It would be neat to have them play with the items before picking them up too. A bit like the dolphin behavior :)
Upvoted, I would definitely like to see this!
Awesome concept and well thought out. You have my vote!
I wish I could vote this one hundred times!
This is a great idea but I would like to see the otters as a independent mob that doesn't help the player progress as in taming but as a mob that just does whatever.
Even pet penguins could also get the job done by using already textured fish barrel block... I personally think that would give a diversity of mobs in ice spikes biomes n also as a pet mob for the players ...
I was thinking maybe they could spawn in groups of up to five be neutral and at night they would lie on their back in the sea and would carry their baby on their tummy.but yeah I think otters are a great idea.
Also it would be cool if their was a new type of villager called the village otter feeder and would trade clam meat for emerald's and stuff like that.
I just posted an almost identical idea not knowing this was already a thing, good to see this idea already has so much support