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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. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Indirect Food Web Interactions: Sea Otters and Kelp Forest - JSTOR Overall, indirect effects of temperature via changes in viscosity were subtle in comparison to the indirect effect of temperature via trophic interactions. Sea otters also play a singular role in supporting kelp forests ecosystems in the North Pacific. This story was produced with additional reporting by Katarina Zimmer. New methods of reintroduction using juvenile sea otters who stranded as pups and were raised by surrogate sea otter mothers also show great promise. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the 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 . MA-043219 to R. Davis). Sea otters were hunted to the brink in the 19th Century fur trade, but their numbers have been slowly recovering since. Click here to sign in with We studied the diets, productivity, and density of breeding Bald Eagles on four islands during 1993-1994 and 2000-2002, when sea otters were abundant and scarce, respectively. In order to maintain their high metabolic rates, the mammals must eat constantly. In the case of the Aleutian Islands reefs, for example, if the scientists had simply exposed living reef samples to warmer and more acidic water in the lab, they might have incorrectly concluded the reefs were in no great danger because those impacts alone only slightly softened their skeleton. Their massive appetites can diminish fishing opportunities for commercial operations and subsistence-based Indigenous communities. This has provided a natural gradient of sea otter occupation time across 20 different sites that allowed us to examine the direct and indirect effects of sea otter recovery. The Lightning Talks: Sea Otters event occurred on Earth Day, 4/22/2021 from 6-7pm PT on YouTube Live. As a nonprofit news organization, we cannot do it without you. The flourishing of ecological thought in the 1970s was matched by a flourishing of environmental legislation. Still, it was clear that a large oil spill could potentially cause the subspecies extinction. Updates? Vol 373, July 9, 2021, p. 223. doi: 10.1126/science.abf4557. Before Quantifying the effect of otters might help ease some of the impacts to fisheries. Medical research advances and health news, The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances, The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web. Ocean Sciences Building, Box 355351 Seattle, WA 98195, uwpcc@uw.edu To me, this is probably one of the clearest pieces of evidence saying, Heres how they did it, Williams says. Our field studies were conducted in the early 1990s, of carbon sequestration through their positive indirect effect on kelp ( Wilmers et al., 2012 ). Simenstad et al. Tour routes of great scenic drives on National Wildlife Refuges. Floating on its back, it opens mollusks by smashing them on a stone balanced on its chest. Otters Show How Predators Can Blunt Climate Damage Researchers have also uncovered other surprising indirect effects, such as sea otters beneficial effects on seagrass abundance and even its genetic diversity. 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. Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. While much focus has been placed on the effects of heat stress on scleractinian corals-including bleaching, mortality, and loss of reef structural complexity-and many studies have documented changes to reef fish communities arising indirectly from shifts in benthic composition, the direct impacts . 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. At 2012 prices (US$47 per ton of C . 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).. Floating on its back, it opens mollusks by smashing them on a stone balanced on its chest. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. Beyond species-specific considerations, any reintroduction effort must consider ecosystem-level implications. Leaks in the energy-generating parts of muscle cells help otters maintain a resting metabolism three times as fast as predicted for a creature their size, researchers report in the July 9 Science. I worked with each of the speakers individually to highlight that our audience tends to be very diverse, with multiple backgrounds, education levels, ages and experiences. We quantified the indirect effects of sea otter recovery on copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus) and kelp greenling (Hexagrammos decagrammos) along a gradient in sea otter occupation time on the central coast of British Columbia. But owners were still stressed and lonely. 2009 May;152(1-4):357-67. doi: 10.1007/s10661-008-0321-7. In general, currents carry warm water from . An official website of the United States government. But researchers didnt understand the cellular origins of that revved-up metabolism for heat generation, Wright says. Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions. Among their favorite foods are sea urchins, which are easy to catch and dense in calories. non-prey species . A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. If urchin populations grow unchecked, they can graze down a kelp forest very quickly, called a trophic cascade. Her thesis focused on the impacts of a marine heatwave on coral reef fish communities on the Big Island of Hawaii. We sampled 47 kelp forests, and found that red . 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. Aboard the ship Svyatoy Petr (Saint Peter), Vitus Berings second Kamchatka expedition foundered in storms and wrecked near an uninhabited island, later named after Bering himself, who was buried there. Epub 2014 Nov 22. Careers. that the number of potential indirect interactions is vastly greater than the number of potential direct interactions in all but the simplest interaction webs (Estes et al. 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. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! [sunlight/temperature], water, and nutrients) and the efficiencies by which these resources are . If prey species in sea otter habitat decline due to changing temperatures, this would reduce available food for otters. Its in their muscles. Other mammals including extremely small mice with high metabolisms can also generate heat this way. The author granted permission for the file to be printed and for the text to be copied and pasted. Testing the nutritional-limitation, predator-avoidance, and storm-avoidance hypotheses for restricted sea otter habitat use in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. But otters extreme metabolism helps them stay cozy in the waves. The eeriness did not end there: during a boat ride, one of Rashers colleagues pointed to a cove where he had seen hundreds of sea otters splashing in the frigid water in the 1970s.