The events are designed to directly align with the Aquariums mission, to inspire conservation of the marine environment. FOIA This site needs JavaScript to work properly. 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. We dont know if this is inherent, Wright says, or if this is something that quickly comes on after birth as a means of generating heat on demand.. But these perpetually hungry mammals don't only protect kelp ecosystems. As the marine mammal species that it protects return to ecologically effective population sizes, we learn what their roles once were, and more importantly, how they might contribute to ecosystem resilience in the future. Breen et al. 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. A version of this article appears in the August 14, 2021 issue of Science News. 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. Moreover, indirect interactions Questions or comments on this article? The Seattle Aquarium lightning talks are recorded and available to watch for free on YouTube. Kelp forests have been found to sequester, or hold onto, carbon in the marine environment. Conrad PA, Miller MA, Kreuder C, James ER, Mazet J, Dabritz H, Jessup DA, Gulland F, Grigg ME. The theory is outlined in a paper released online today (September 7, 2012) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by lead authors UC Santa Cruz professors Chris Wilmers and James Estes. 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. So what you would expect to happen with the loss of a species in the absence of climate change is not whats going to happen with the loss of that species in the presence of climate change . And this paper is the holy grail of showing that interaction.. 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. 1982, Estes and Duggins 1995, Watson and Estes 2011, Burt et al. 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. 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. You might have reduced survival because of the direct effect of heat, he says, but [changes caused by] predation and competition can compensate for those direct losses. 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. When sea otters are lost from an ecosystem, sea urchin numbers spike. Researchers have proposed that sea otters and their evolutionary progenitors could be indirectly responsible for evolution of the unusually large body sizes of the abalone species in the North Pacific Ocean. 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. With more hairs per square inch than those of any other mammal, the thick, lush furs fetched enormous sums. The events are designed to directly align with the Aquariums mission, to inspire conservation of the marine environment. Several otters are available for an experiment. They are primarily found in kelp forests, which are underwater forest-like systems, home to many species. Medical research advances and health news, The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances, The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted 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. Sea otters began slowly and methodically to expand their range to the north and south of Bixby Cove. Sea otters feed mainly on sea urchins and on crabs and other shellfish. We used the overexploitation, recovery and subsequent collapse of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) populations in the Aleutian archipelago to explore if and how the abundance and diet of kelp forest fishes are influenced by a trophic cascade linking sea otters with sea urchins and fleshy macroalgae. I believe the speakers did an amazing job at articulating climate change through an animal lens, and they highlighted multiple ways that climate change will impact the marine environment and how sea otters can help mitigate those changes. Beyond species-specific considerations, any reintroduction effort must consider ecosystem-level implications. Mitigating increased CO2 in the atmosphere is a pressing issue in global environmental conservation with many obstacles and no easy solutions, the authors write. Predatory fish invasion induces within and across ecosystem effects in Yellowstone National Park. 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. And similar situations likely hold true for other ecosystems across the globe. Science. But when dead kelp sinks to the sea floor, it might not surface (and therefore decompose and produce carbon dioxide) for thousands of years. J Toxicol Environ Health. (C) duration (sec) Otter Water J2 J1 B7 B9 M3 D4 B8 4 8 8 12 12 16 20 y 63 75 84 91 101 110 115 We want to determine if water temperature is useful That means it's pulling carbon from the atmosphere faster than a slower growing plant (though kelp is technically an alga). The sea otter had been hunted almost to extinction for its fur by 1910. 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. 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." Disclaimer. Carbon prices have climbed since then, recently exceeding 60 (51/$71) a tonne, which would bring that estimate even higher in today's market. 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). 2018). Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are a small mammal in the weasel family. The population at San Nicolas Island remained small for many years because most translocated sea otters had dispersed from the island soon after release, leaving a founding population of only about a dozen animals. Indirect effects and prey behavior mediate interactions between an endangered prey and recovering predator. Although trophic cascades - the effect of apex predators on progressively lower trophic level species through top-down forcing - have been demonstrated in diverse ecosystems, the broader potential influences of trophic cascades on other species and ecosystem processes are not well studied. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Provided by 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. The video link was shared 53 times. It inhabits coastal waters from the Kuril Islands to the Aleutian Islands southward to the coast of California. That mission has never been more important than it is today. Invest in quality science journalism by donating today. An official website of the United States government. The find shows how otters meet the challenge of staying warm at sea and could apply to other marine mammals, too. National Library of Medicine The spreading kelp can. This loss of otters demonstrated their indispensable role in kelp forests. They are a, Digest climate science so that it is accessible to a wide audience, Articulate climate change through an animal lens, Spotlight the multiple ways in which climate change will impact the marine environment, Evaluate whether the science was communicated effectively. Kelp, urchins, carbon, indigenous participation, and reintroduction are part of the answer. Knowledge awaits. If you liked this story,sign up for the weeklybbc.comfeatures newsletter, called "The Essential List". "Just in my own soul, it was an important thing," he says of his early observations of that stark difference. 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. (Phys.org)Can an abundance of sea otters help reverse a principal cause of global warming? Although sea otters spend most of their time in the ocean, they come to the shore on occasion to escape predators in the water, rest, or warm up. 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. Our field studies were conducted in the early 1990s, Although abalone are a favorite prey item, they make up only a small proportion of the diet of the sea otter population overall, the remainder consisting of several dozen species of marine invertebrates, including many kinds of crabs, clams, sea urchins, mussels, chitons, octopuses, sea stars, and marine worms. The thick lustrous coat is reddish to dark brown. The Service terminated the translocation program and its associated zones in 2012. When sea otters are absent, urchins decimate kelp, resulting in low net primary productivity. "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. Your feedback is important to us. part may be reproduced without the written permission. Thanks for reading Scientific American. What was Rosalind Franklins true role in the discovery of DNAs double helix. If prey species in sea otter habitat decline due to changing temperatures, this would reduce available food for otters. Simenstad. of carbon sequestration through their positive indirect effect on kelp (Wilmers et al., 2012). "But animals the world over, working in different ways to influence the carbon cycle, might actually have a large impact. 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Other Russians soon returned to obtain more furs, forcing skilled Aleutian hunters to join their hunting expeditions. The most widely studied and well-known pathway is from sea otters to herbivorous macroinvertebrates (primarily urchins) to kelp and other macroalgae (Estes and Palmisano 1974, Duggins 1980, Breen et al. Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. In 2020, the Seattle Aquarium transitioned its Lightning Talk event to a virtual format. Before Contrary to our predictions, we found no effects on density of breeding pairs on four islands from 1993-1994 to 2000-2002. These sea otters were the only living representatives of the subspecies that came to be known as the southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis). Sea otters are lean and compact, the smallest mammals in the ocean, bobbing like furry barrels on waves. Click here to sign in with Although the indirect effects of sea otters are widely known, this example is unique because the food-web pathway transcended five species and several trophic levels in linking one apex predator to another. They note that markets have been established in Europe and the United States to trade carbon credits and thus inject an economic incentive into either reducing CO2 output or increasing CO2 sequestration. Ocean acidification (OA) is another climate-induced process that could indirectly impact sea otters. 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. "So I'm talking sea grasses, marshes and mangroves those are going to be the big three carbon sequestration habitats, in my opinion.". But if those protons leak back over the membrane before being used for work, that energy is lost as heat. (1977a) identified several interaction web pathways by which sea otters might influence the behavior and population biology of kelp forest fishes, including direct E-mail us atfeedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ. The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. In a 2018 study he considered how interactions among pond predators (dragonfly larvae) and their herbivorous prey (the tadpoles of gray tree frogs and green frogs) changed amid rising temperatures. 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. The video link was shared 53 times. If urchin populations grow unchecked, they can graze down a kelp forest very quickly, called a trophic cascade. With one of their main natural predators absent for so long, abalone could be found exposed on rocks instead of hidden in crevices, sometimes piled several animals deep. She delights in all things creeping, crawling and curious, and studies human-dog coevolution as an anthropology Ph.D. student at Washington State University. The Services assessment reviews the biological, socioeconomic, and legal aspects of reintroduction feasibility and summarizes known information, key data gaps, and stakeholder perspectives. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aav1139. The sea otter is the largest otter, reaching 100160 cm (4065 inches) long and weighing 1640 kg (3590 pounds) when fully grown. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZmiqJ12Mms. Often resting near beds of kelp, where they rely on their buoyant bodies to float on their backs, sea otters can gather in groups of up to 1,000 individuals, grasping one anothers forefeet to create large rafts or pods. 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. The spreading kelp can absorb as much as 12 times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins, the study finds. 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. That message is loud and clear, and just brilliant, Williams says. The sea otters keystone role in nearshore marine ecosystems was first recognized in 1974, initiating an extensive body of work on sea otters indirect effects, including increases in the abundance of kelp-associated finfish. Discover world-changing science. 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. When present, sea otters eat so many urchins that the invertebrate's population stays low. 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). The rate of oxygen flow offers an indirect measurement of cells heat production. These lightning talk events are widely accessible to all with an internet connection. Rudolf, Wilmers and Rasher all say their work shows that future climate change research needs to factor in ecosystem complexity more effectively. We used hook-and-line surveys and underwater visual transects at shallow depths (2-25 m) across 20 rocky reef sites and a space-for-time substitution representing variation in sea otter occupation time. By Lilian Carswell, Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Marine Conservation Coordinator,Ventura Fish and Wildlife Office, People traveling on Californias newly built Highway 1 in 1937 saw something astonishing. Omissions? That's more carbon than that emitted from a million passenger cars for a year. They estimate that the CO2 removed from the atmosphere via the otter-kelp link could be worth between $205 million and $408 million on the European Carbon Exchange. of carbon sequestration through their positive indirect effect on kelp ( Wilmers et al., 2012 ). 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. Two of these populations disappeared by the end of the decade. The sea otters brush with extinction began far away from those rocky shores, in the Russian Far East. In general, currents carry warm water from . Sea otters are also the smallest marine mammal in the northern hemisphere. For the survey, 224 people participated out of a potential of 364 viewers (61.4%). Read about our approach to external linking. It buffers it out a bit.. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here. Bringing the otters back would bring many ecological benefits, he says, and would also buy us time to get our act together on curbing carbon emissions., Nancy Averett writes about the environment and social science from Cincinnati, Ohio. Enhydra lutris is the furriest animal on Earth, with up to 140,000 hairs on every square centimeter of its body meaning its hairs are 700 times as dense as those on a human head. In contrast, in areas with otters, the kelp flourished along with the diverse aquatic community that feeds and shelters among the seaweed. MA-043219 to R. Davis), 1719 N Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, Neuroscientists decoded peoples thoughts using brain scans, Mouse hair turns gray when certain stem cells get stuck, Here are 5 cool findings from a massive project on 240 mammal genomes, Fentanyl deaths have spiked among U.S. children and teens, Satellite data reveal nearly 20,000 previously unknown deep-sea mountains, Thawing permafrost may unleash industrial pollution across the Arctic, Ultrasound reveals trees drought-survival secrets, Seismic waves crossing Mars core reveal details of the Red Planets heart, Rocky planets might have been able to form in the early universe, Cosmic antimatter hints at origins of huge bubbles in our galaxys center, Black holes resolve paradoxes by destroying quantum states, These worms can escape tangled blobs in an instant. Effects of predator depletion or recovery are frequently accompanied by time lags, which are often context-dependent. I think were all coming to realize that theres going to be a lot of synergies between species loss and climate change, says Hillary Young, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the new study. www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/110176. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! The appetite of the sea otter is a threat to individual abalone who have not hidden themselves in deep rocky crevices, but where sufficient crevice habitat is available, this same appetite brings benefits to abalone populations. "When those kelps get dislodged they can travel and circulate on the surface for a 1,000km [620 miles]," says Hughes. Also known as: Enhydra lutris, great sea otter. Koel TM, Tronstad LM, Arnold JL, Gunther KA, Smith DW, Syslo JM, White PJ. Reisewitz, S. E., J. The herbivorous urchins then basically clear cut the kelp, chewing through the holdfasts at their base and sending the rest of the giant algae to wash away. In order to maintain their high metabolic rates, the mammals must eat constantly. Sea otters recovered modestly during the 20th century; however, their populations remain widely separated. The two losses are connected. PMC This is what makes them a "keystone" species without their presence, the stability of the entire ecosystem can be lost.
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