If prey species in sea otter habitat decline due to changing temperatures, this would reduce available food for otters. The presentations needed to be accessible, with no jargon and no assumptions that the audience has any background knowledge in what they are speaking about. Volker Rudolf, an ecologist at Rice University, also found that predators can alter the effects of climate change. 2015 Mar;177(3):645-655. doi: 10.1007/s00442-014-3149-6. Indirect effects and prey behavior mediate interactions between an endangered prey and recovering predator. Over an ecosystem area of approximately 5.1 10 10 m 2, the effect of sea otter predation on living kelp biomass alone represents a 4.4-to 8.7-teragram increase in C storage. Contrary to our predictions, we found no effects on density of breeding pairs on four islands from 1993-1994 to 2000-2002. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no appreciable enrichment of the 13C signature across the gradient of sea otter occupation time associated with an increase in the amount of kelp-derived carbon within fish. Carbon that is thus sequestered prevented from entering the atmosphere for 100 or more years can be key to addressing the climate crisis. "When those kelps get dislodged they can travel and circulate on the surface for a 1,000km [620 miles]," says Hughes. After becoming aware of this diminishing resource, the United States, Great Britain (for Canada),Japan, and Russia signed theNorth Pacific Sealing Convention in 1911 to protect sea otters and northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus). Bald eagles and sea otters in the Aleutian Archipelago: indirect Is that sea otter stealing your lunch -- or making it? Female sea otters give birth in water to only one young at a time, and the young remains dependent on the mother until six to eight months of age. Sea otters recovered modestly during the 20th century; however, their populations remain widely separated. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies The content is provided for information purposes only. I believe my capstone project was successful in accomplishing all of the learning objectives. Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. These slugs and snails often don't eat the seagrass; instead they scrape away the algae that grows on the grass, which allows the seagrass to absorb more sunlight and grow more efficiently. In the mid-1980s, the two islands with high-density otter populations supported dense kelp forests, relatively few urchins, and abundant rock greenling whereas the opposite pattern (abundant urchins, sparse kelp forests, and relatively few rock greenling) occurred at islands where otters were rare. 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. sea otter, (Enhydra lutris), also called great sea otter, completely marine otter species of the northern Pacific, usually found in kelp beds. Thanks for reading Scientific American. On Second Chances: The Southern Sea Otter's Return to Ecological 4. A. Estes, and C. A. Simenstad. The voracious echinoderms not only mowed down the kelp but are also tearing apart and devouring the massive, slow-forming limestone reefs on which this seaweed grows, Rasher and his colleagues recently reported in Science. Epub 2008 Jun 3. The site is secure. The biologist attributed this improvement from their near-extermination just a few years earlier to the states total protection. Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions. Sea otters are also the smallest marine mammal in the northern hemisphere. Skeletal muscle thermogenesis enables aquatic life in the smallest marine mammal. Digging would have stimulated sexual reproduction and increased seed set, an interaction that unraveled with otter extirpation. Sea Otters To Combat Climate Change? | PlanetSave Baby otters dont yet have the muscle mass to stay warm through these leaks, but their muscle cells generate heat at adult rates, the researchers found, showing that proton leak begins early. Comparison of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, manganese, mercury and selenium in feathers in bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and comparison with common eider (Somateria mollissima), glaucous-winged gull (Larus glaucescens), pigeon guillemot (Cepphus columba), and tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) from the Aleutian Chain of Alaska. Kelp is particularly efficient at sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. These include increasing or decreasing prey, changing competitive abilities, shifting feeding rates and altering trophic cascades. Registration occurred through the Seattle Aquarium website, and was advertised in multiple ways (facebook ads, Seattle Aquarium members, staff and volunteers, UW SMEA department listserv, UW PCC listserv, etc). --. In general, currents carry warm water from . Recent work in British Columbia has shown that the economic benefits of sea otter restoration stemming from finfish increases, carbon sequestration, and ecotourism outweigh the costs many times over, about sevenfold. But since the return of the otters, the eelgrass has expanded by more than sixfold. But sea otters are much better at it: These proton leaks account for about 40 percent of otters muscle cells total respiratory capacity, higher than any known mammal except those tiny mice. Predatory fish invasion induces within and across ecosystem effects in Yellowstone National Park. A lightning talk is a very short presentation (5 minutes) and requires the presenter to be brief, clear and succinct. Among their favorite foods are sea urchins, which are easy to catch and dense in calories. 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. Using data on the rate of kelp growth and its density at sites with and without otters, they found that the presence of sea otters across rocky reef habitat in the study area, covering 51,551 square kilometers (19,900 square miles an area about the same size as Costa Rica), is capable of storing 4.4 to 8.7 million tonnes of carbon compared to if an otter-free condition. Bald Eagles and Sea Otters in The Aleutian Archipelago: Indirect A version of this article appears in the August 14, 2021 issue of Science News. The final registration number was 1,005 people. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! One of the easiest ways that anyone can support bird habitat conservation is by buying duck stamps. Mitochondria pump protons across their inner membrane to store energy that can be used to power the cell. These lightning talk events are widely accessible to all with an internet connection. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. The sea otter had been hunted almost to extinction for its fur by 1910. Other mammals including extremely small mice with high metabolisms can also generate heat this way. And when older roots die, the carbon becomes locked in the sediments, where it can take hundreds of years or more to convert back to its gaseous form. The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The team collected tissue from 21 captive and wild sea otters, ranging from babies to adults. Our mission is to provide accurate, engaging news of science to the public. "Right now, all the climate change models and proposed methods of sequestering carbon ignore animals," Wilmers said. These animals were in danger, and state officials knew it. Another challenge faced by sea otters is the need to obtain enough calories to fuel their extremely high metabolic rates, which requires that sea otters consume the equivalent of 20-25% of their . Corrections? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZmiqJ12Mms. Those whose grandparents remembered there were once weasel-like animals living along the cold Pacific shorelines of North America thought they were extinct, or at least extirpated from the lower 48. 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. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the "They have a disproportionately large impact on the ecosystem relative to their abundance," says Heidi Pearson, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast. 1982, Estes and Duggins 1995, Watson and Estes 2011, Burt et al. Kelp forests have been found to sequester, or hold onto, carbon in the marine environment. A. Estes, C.A. The video link was shared 53 times. National Library of Medicine Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. PDF Direct and Indirect Effects of Sea Otter Recovery on the Central Coast Fish and Wildlife Service listed the southern sea otter as threatened. This could be a game changer in terms of how we think about the evolution of all marine mammals, not just sea otters, says Terrie Williams, an ecophysiologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. In 1911, most Californians werent thinking about sea otters. Increases in kelp and seagrass due to sea otters can translate into increased carbon sequestration. Climate change-amplified temperature anomalies pose an imminent threat to coral reef ecosystems. Today, there are about 3,000 southern sea otters, and although their condition has improved since the time of ESA listing, they remain far from the MMPA goal of restored ecological relevance. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Understanding sea otter effects through complexity Fifteen years ago Christopher Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published studies looking at how warmer winters in Yellowstone National Park meant fewer elk foundering in deep snow and dying. Questions or comments on this article? An adult male sea otter weighing 34 kg provides 61,540 kcal (34,000 gm 1.81 kcal gm -1 of wet weight); a 23-kg adult female otter provides 41,630 kcal. 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. Before the fur trade, the range of sea otters spanned the entire North Pacific rim, from the northern islands of Japan to midway down the Pacific Coast of Baja California, Mexico. The loss or recovery of apex predators can have profound positive or negative ecological and socio-economic impacts. One species had lower survival rates in heated water when it was on its ownbut when exposed to either competition or predation, the rates between heated and nonheated ponds were virtually equal. 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. We sampled 47 kelp forests, and found that red . T. Wright et al. Scientists still need to understand the reasons behind the otters disappearances, but Rasher Is hopeful. Thanks for reading Scientific American. In 2017 his team resurveyed the reefs status across the Aleutian archipelago and discovered that some had shrunk precipitously in just three years. The population off Big Sur was the most isolated of all of these, separated from any other surviving sea otters by about 2,000 miles. Koel TM, Tronstad LM, Arnold JL, Gunther KA, Smith DW, Syslo JM, White PJ. "It is significant because it shows that animals can have a big influence on the carbon cycle," said Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies. 2006 Jan;146(4):623-31. doi: 10.1007/s00442-005-0230-1. . 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. amount of work on sea otter-sea urchin-macroalgal relationships, our study focuses on the indirect effects of this trophic cascade on kelp forest fishes. Read about my event of short engaging lightning talks in fulfillment of the UW PCC Graduate Certificate in Climate Science. Beyond species-specific considerations, any reintroduction effort must consider ecosystem-level implications. 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. Omissions? The return of these playful creatures doesn't just transform their ecosystems, it can turn them into a powerful carbon sink. Our inferences were based on previously established effects of sea otters on kelp-forest ecosystems and patterns of covariation in sea otter density and the diets and demography of Bald Eagles. By this time, several generations of Californians had lived and died in a world essentially devoid of sea otters. Ecol Evol. . Nearshore Marine Ecosystem Research | U.S. Geological Survey 2020 Feb;192(2):391-401. doi: 10.1007/s00442-019-04578-8. Bookshelf According to this explanation, by defending macroalgae (like kelp) from herbivores that attacked its living parts, sea otters allowed the macroalgae to relax its chemical defenses, making the pieces that drifted down to waiting herbivores higher quality food. After the event, there were >1,000 views of the YouTube video within 12 hours. Updates? Ocean Sciences Building, Box 355351 Seattle, WA 98195, uwpcc@uw.edu When otters are around, sea urchins hide in crevices and eat kelp scraps. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted With no otters around, sea urchins graze voraciously on living kelp. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. Bringing sea otters back to the Pacific coast pays off, but not for everyone, How kelp forests off California are responding to an urchin takeover, 50 years ago, atomic testing created otter refugees, Heres what we know about upcoming vaccines and antibodies against RSV, Pets and people bonded during the pandemic. Bald Eagles depend on nearshore marine communities for most of their prey in this ecosystem, so we predicted that the recent decline in otter populations would have an indirect negative effect on diets and demography of Bald Eagles. Now, scientists are studying how these marine mustelids may also be climate superheroes. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The Seattle Aquarium lightning talks are recorded and available to watch for free on YouTube. Sea otters stay warm thanks to leaky mitochondria in their muscles 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. But to understand the sea otters relationship with abalone, and with other organisms in the nearshore marine communities of the North Pacific Ocean, we need to go back in time. "They have this little radula that gently scrapes [the seagrass] and takes off all the epiphytes growing on it. Registration occurred through the Seattle Aquarium website, and was advertised in multiple ways (facebook ads, Seattle Aquarium members, staff and volunteers, UW SMEA department listserv, UW PCC listserv, etc). PDF Bald Eagles and Sea Otters in the Aleutian Archipelago: Indirect Because these proton leaks increase the amount of energy lost as heat, otters need to eat more food to make up for that lost energy, revving up their metabolism. In California's Elkhorn Slough estuary, eelgrass had nearly disappeared by the early 1980s due to declining water quality nutrient pollution from farms increased algal growth, smothering the seagrass. We used the overexploitation, recovery and subsequent collapse of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) populations in t Although these ecological discoveries are relatively recent, the relationships between sea otters and other organisms in the nearshore North Pacific, with whom they coevolved for millions of years, are ancient. For the survey, 224 people participated out of a potential of 364 viewers (61.4%). That mission has never been more important than it is today. Then, using a device called a respirometer, researchers measured otter muscle cells respiratory capacity in different states of oxygen flow compared with other animals including humans, Iditarod sled dogs and elephant seals. Sea otters also play a singular role in supporting kelp forests ecosystems in the North Pacific. The Seattle Aquarium lightning talks are recorded and available to watch for free on YouTube. Read about my event of short engaging lightning talks in fulfillment of the UW PCC Graduate Certificate in Climate Science. Indirect food web interactions: Sea otters and kelp forest - USGS Using data on the rate of kelp growth and its density at sites with and without otters, they found that the presence of sea otters across rocky reef habitat in the study area, covering 51,551 . The loss or recovery of apex predators can have profound positive or negative ecological and socio-economic impacts. An official website of the United States government. 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. 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. Large areas that had been alive for centuries or millennia were crumbling and bleached, indicating urchins had recently killed them. Part of the trouble is the gas-filled sacks along their stalks. 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 food. Medical research advances and health news, The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances, The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web. Effects of predator depletion or recovery are frequently accompanied by time lags, which are often context-dependent. Epub 2005 Sep 27. Tour routes of great scenic drives on National Wildlife Refuges. Because of sea otters role in protecting kelp forests, they impact the lives of not just abalone but hundreds of other species that depend on the shelter, food, or substrate provided by kelp. Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology.