Oecologia. Several otters are available for an experiment. Sea otters lack the blubber and large body size that help other marine mammals survive frigid ocean temperatures. By the submission of this blog, there were 1,336 views. Reisewitz, S. E., J. Because sea otters (Enhydra lutris) exert a wide array of direct and indirect effects on coastal marine ecosystems throughout their geographic range, we investigated the potential influence of sea otters on the ecology of Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, USA. Moreover, indirect interactions | (206) 543-6521, 2023 University of Washington | But because the researchers also included sea urchins in their tanks, they realized how the two forces interacted: sea urchin grazing increased significantly as warming and acidity increased, pushing the system beyond a critical tipping point, Rasher says. MA-043219 to R. Davis). Part of the trouble is the gas-filled sacks along their stalks. Medical research advances and health news, The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances, The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web. What participants desired most out of the event was to learn and connect. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! Evidence of this coevolution may be seen in the bodies of animals, like abalone, today. For the survey, 224 people participated out of a potential of 364 viewers (61.4%). Our study highlights the power of trophic cascades in nature and the potential for large predators to ameliorate some of the effects of climate change in the near term, Rasher and his co-authors wrote. And it could lead to new insights into how the ancestors of these creatures first evolved to live and thrive in the seas. 2006. Even at a lower estimate, sea otter carbon sequestration can add up. In the absence of sea otters, these areas would have an NPP of 25-70 g C m 2 yr 1 and biomass density of 8-14 g C m 2. Scientists already knew sea otters rely on an extreme metabolism to maintain, on average, a 37 Celsius body temperature, eating 25 percent of their body mass in food every day (SN: 6/13/14).. Far below their vantage point at the edge of the rugged Big Sur cliffs, tossed on rough waters, was a cluster of buoyant, dark forms. Bookshelf Wolf C, Betts MG, Levi T, Newsome TM, Ripple WJ. are a small mammal in the weasel family. The Lightning Talks: Sea Otters event occurred on Earth Day, 4/22/2021 from 6-7pm PT on YouTube Live. If you liked this story,sign up for the weeklybbc.comfeatures newsletter, called "The Essential List". Many of the participants equated the term climate change negatively (i.e. The Services assessment reviews the biological, socioeconomic, and legal aspects of reintroduction feasibility and summarizes known information, key data gaps, and stakeholder perspectives. Amy Olsen is a second-year masters student of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and completed this capstone project for the Graduate Certificate in Climate Science. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Sea otters have likely exerted evolutionary and ecological effects on North Pacific eelgrass meadows since at least the mid-Pleistocene (~600 to 700 thousand years ago) (19, 22). It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483). Randall Davis (Image obtained under USFWS Marine MammalPermitNo. One idea researchers have floated is to use money from otter-generated carbon offsets to compensate fishers for losses in their catch. In order to maintain their high metabolic rates, the mammals must eat constantly. Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. Sea otters help ecosystems capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it as biomass and deep-sea detritus, preventing it from being converted back to carbon dioxide and contributing to climate change. It inhabits coastal waters from the Kuril Islands to the Aleutian Islands southward to the coast of California. A lock () or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Carbon that is thus sequestered prevented from entering the atmosphere for 100 or more years can be key to addressing the climate crisis. A new study by two UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest that a thriving sea otter population that keeps sea urchins in check will in turn allow kelp forests to prosper. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In contrast, in areas with otters, the kelp flourished along with the diverse aquatic community that feeds and shelters among the seaweed. E-mail us atfeedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ. Incorporating it would offer a clearer picture of what a warmer future holds in store. "If ecologists can get a better handle on what these impacts are, there might be opportunities for win-win conservation scenarios, whereby animal species are protected or enhanced, and carbon gets sequestered," he said. Not only can a wider audience be reached, but speakers from throughout the world can participate. The frequency of sea otter pups, rock greenling (Hexagammus lagocephalus), and smooth lumpsuckers (Aptocyclus ventricosus) in the eagle's diet declined with corresponding increases in Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus), Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens), Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus monopterygius), and various species of seabirds during the period of the recent otter population decline. Large areas that had been alive for centuries or millennia were crumbling and bleached, indicating urchins had recently killed them. She currently works as a research technician at the Seattle Aquarium where she assists with on-going conservation research projects spanning rockfish surveys, sea otter foraging, endocrinology, microplastics and coral reef monitoring. The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. Sea otters, the "keystone predator" of Aleutian Islands' kelp forests, experienced dramatic population declines in the 1990s. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. 2016. The result was less early-winter carrion for the parks many scavengers, such as grizzly bears and ravens, with dead elk bunching up at the end of relatively severe winters. Unlike many other marine mammals, they lack blubber, so they keep themselves warm by eating a quarter of their body weight in food a day. In 1911, most Californians werent thinking about sea otters. Indirect effects and prey behavior mediate interactions between an endangered prey and recovering predator. Rogers-Bennett, L . In 1915, a California Department of Fish and Game biologist reported sightings by local residents of up to 32 sea otters at any one time. By consuming sea urchins who are not similarly hidden, sea otters change sea urchin behavior. They have mostly done so by exposing a single species to warmer temperatures and/or higher acidity and recording how it responds, however. Links also do not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. This story was updated August 24, 2021, to correct the description of surface area's effect on heat loss. part may be reproduced without the written permission. MeSH Sea otters secret to staying warm isnt in thick stores of blubber. While scuba diving around the Aleutian Islands in 2014, marine ecologist Doug Rasher saw little sign of the curtains of lush green kelp forests he would have had to push through decades earlier. Scientists dont yet know how otters cells turn this process on and off. They found that otters 'undoubtedly' have a strong influence on the cycle of CO2 storage." "Comparing kelp density with otters and kelp density without otters, they found that 'sea otters have a positive indirect effect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins, a kelp grazer.' He raised some tadpoles separated by species, some with mixed species, and others with mixed species and the dragonfly larvae. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. In a study on black abalone, which were listed as endangered in 2009 due to the combined effects of past overharvesting and a devastating disease called withering syndrome, researchers found that the highest densities of black abalone occurred in areas with the highest densities of sea otters. Their massive appetites can diminish fishing opportunities for commercial operations and subsistence-based Indigenous communities. University of California - Santa Cruz. The main objectives of this project were to: In 2020, the Seattle Aquarium transitioned its Lightning Talk event to a virtual format. Rising ocean temperatures and acidification are compounding the damage. They enter a dormant state, biding their time under new kelp sprouts, and then revving back into action to eat the young seaweed. "Right now, all the climate change models and proposed methods of sequestering carbon ignore animals," Wilmers said. . Fish and Wildlife Service. Invest in quality science journalism by donating today. Two of these populations disappeared by the end of the decade. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted Skeletal muscle makes up 40 to 50 percent of most mammals body mass, so it affects the whole bodys metabolism. Blue rockfish in a giant kelp forest off North Monastery Beach, Carmel, California, 2022. ", More information: Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. Sea otter populations along British Columbia's (BC) Central Coast are growing and expanding their range at a rapid rate. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Corrections? Science. Wolves provide this kind of temporal subsidy, where theyre making food for scavengers that would be overabundant at one time of year and underabundant at another and smoothing it out, says Wilmers, who tracked Yellowstone wolf packs for four years. As sea otters have been reintroduced or naturally recovered in other coastal areas of North America, they have substantially disturbed the structure and dynamics of nearshore foodwebs. Other marine mammals have high metabolisms to cope with cold water, too, but they also often rely on large bodies and blubber to stay toasty (SN: 12/14/18). Small bodies with less surface area don't lose heat faster; it's small bodies with greater surface area relative to their volume that do. The money to be made sparked a multinational fur rush, involving Russian, Japanese, Spanish, British, and American traders. This higher quality food allowed abalone species to attain much larger body sizes than those found in other oceans, where the herbivores do not have similarly effective predators. One of the easiest ways that anyone can support bird habitat conservation is by buying duck stamps. In the 1960s, they reached the waters of Gorda and San Simeon, north of Morro Bay, prime fishing grounds for a lucrative commercial abalone fishery that had begun in earnest after World War II. From the moment Berings men returned home to Russia with sea otter pelts, the species was in mortal danger. National Library of Medicine Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Finding similar leak capacities in wild and captive otters of different ages suggests that these leaks are the driving force behind otters metabolism, Wright says. 2018). Few other animals eat as much relative to their weight or play such a pivotal role in maintaining their environment, says Brent Hughes, a marine ecologist studying coastal habitats at Sonoma State University in California. Read the assessment here. Sea otters are a shallow-water species, spending their lives within depths where they can reach the bottom for food, so the sea otters range tends to hug the coastline, visible to and easily within reach of hunters. Epub 2005 Sep 27. And in both these ecosystems, otters might have the added benefit of storing carbon. "An alluring idea," they write, would be to sell the carbon indirectly sequestered by the sea otter protected kelp forest "as a way to pay for their reintroduction and management or to compensate losses to shell fisheries from sea otter predation. The flourishing of ecological thought in the 1970s was matched by a flourishing of environmental legislation. Epub 2014 Nov 22. Is that sea otter stealing your lunch -- or making it? Wilmers and Estes acknowledge that a spreading otter population won't solve the problem of higher CO2 in the atmosphere but argue that the restoration and protection of otters is an example how managing animal populations can affect ecosystems abilities to sequester carbon. Staff login, Expand Climate Minor Testing Page Section. Many of the changes will occur as a direct result of predation by sea otters; other changes will result from indirect or cascading effects of sea otter foraging, such as increasing kelp production and modified prey availability for other nearshore predators. However, copper rockfish fishable biomass was negatively correlated with canopy kelp stipe density, likely due to the successional transition as sea otters return to an area from the disturbance-tolerant annual kelp Nereocystis to the perennial kelp Macrocystis. Oecologia. Sea otters also play a singular role in supporting kelp forests ecosystems in the North Pacific. Learn more about structure and function of the surrounding ecosystem. This explanatory language, which accompanied the 2021 Appropriations Act, also instructed the Service to study the feasibility and cost of reestablishing sea otters on the Pacific Coast of the contiguous United States. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. To me, this is probably one of the clearest pieces of evidence saying, Heres how they did it, Williams says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZmiqJ12Mms. subsequent decline in sea otter populations in the central Aleutian Archipelago. The southern sea otter has reclaimed only about 13% of its historical range, and its population size is far below its estimated historical population size in California, about 17,000 (though it could be as low as 10,000 or as high as 30,000), a number that does not include the historical populations in Oregon and Baja California. Get great science journalism, from the most trusted source, delivered to your doorstep. Direct and indirect effects of temperature and prey abundance on bald eagle reproductive dynamics. The loss or recovery of apex predators can have profound positive or negative ecological and socio-economic impacts.
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