How sea otters help save the planet by Robin McKie

New research into the complex links of the food chain suggest that the lovable mammals play a key role in managing
carbon dioxide levels.

Charles Darwin once mused on the impacts that predators could have on the landscapes around them. In particular, he
wondered – in On the Origin of Species – how neighborhood cats might affect the abundance of flowers in the fields
near his house at Downe in Kent. He concluded the animals’ potential to change local flora was considerable. A robust
cat population, he argued, would mean that local mouse numbers would be low and that, in turn, would mean there
would high numbers of bumble bees – because mice destroy bee combs and nests. And as bees pollinate clover, Darwin
argued that this cascade of oscillating species numbers would result in there being more clover in fields in areas where
there are lots of feline pets. Cats mean clover, in short.

It was an idea that took the fancy of Darwin’s chief disciple,

the biologist Thomas Huxley who extended this cat-clover
cascade in 1892 to include old maids. They kept cats, Huxley
argued, and those pets would ensure neighboring fields
would be low in mice, high in bees and rich in clover. And
that in turn would have powerful consequences for the
British Empire, Huxley added. Cattle graze on clover and
cattle means beef. Thus old maids would provide the
perfect setting for ensuring plenty of clover and therefore
healthy cattle and good roast beef to feed our troops and
thus ensure the prosperity of the British Empire. Old maids
mean military might, in short.

Huxley was almost certainly being facetious in outlining his maids-to-empire chain. Nevertheless, the concept of trophic
cascades – as these ladders of interacting predator and prey populations are now known – is recognized today as being a
powerful and important force in shaping the natural history of our planet. More to the point, as human activities impact
more and more on wildlife, we are changing trophic cascades with profound and unexpected consequences. This view
of nature – looking down from the top – contrasts with previous attempts to understand food chains from changes that
affect their bottom rungs to see how animals and predators at higher levels are affected. An example of this approach is
provided by scientists who study how reductions in Arctic sea ice might reduce levels of algae (which forms on the
underside of sea ice) and which might then affect the creatures that consume alga: the plankton, fish and seals further
up the food chain.

Top-down forcing – or trophic cascades – looks at the problem in the reverse direction, with a perfect example being
provided by the work of James Estes, an American marine biologist who has studied wildlife in the north Pacific Ocean
for the past 45 years and has revealed the astonishing manner in which terrestrial and sea predators can change land
and marine environments. This top-down picture – with predators influencing the health of plants – is depicted in
enthralling detail in his newly published Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature (University of California
Press).

Estes has spent most of his working life in the Aleutian Islands, which stretch across the North Pacific Ocean from Alaska
to the coast of Kamchatka in eastern Russia. “No place in the modern world is much wilder or more remote than the
Aleutians,” he says. This isolation has not put the islands beyond the harmful influence of humans, however. As
explorers opened up the far north two centuries ago, hunters pushed deeper into the Aleutians in pursuit of the pelts of
the sea otters that thrived there in their hundreds of thousands. A member of the weasel family, the sea otter (Enhydra
lutris) keeps warm in the water because it possesses the densest fur in the animal kingdom – about 850,000 to a million
hairs per square inch. This insulates it from the cold.
However, the sea otter’s thick, rich pelt also made it a major target for hunters who, by the 1900s, had brought the
animal close to extinction. “Only a dozen or so small colonies survived,” Estes tells us. In the end, an international ban on
sea otter hunting was imposed, saving the animal from complete eradication. Since then, the sea otter has become an
important poster species for the ecology movement: a lovable, cuddly sea mammal that was saved from extinction
thanks to international action. They are the teddy bears of the oceans, as one commentator has described them. Filmed
as they float on their backs, cracking open sea urchins, crabs, abalones and other shellfish with flat stones before eating
them, the animal is certainly an endearing sight.

But this constant culinary activity masks a serious issue for the sea otter. An adult animal needs to consume vast
amounts of food to survive, about a quarter of its own body weight – up to 11kg – every day, hence all that shell
crunching and munching. The question that intrigued Estes when he began his marine studies in the Aleutians in the
1970s was straightforward: given its voracious appetite for urchins, crabs and the like, what was the ecological
consequence of that calamitous drop in sea otters numbers last century? To find an answer, he began surveying sea
floors around islands where sea otters had survived and others where they had disappeared and had yet to be
reintroduced.

What Estes found was striking: around islands that now lacked sea otters, sea urchins – their main prey – had increased
in size and in numbers with devastating consequences. The forests of kelp that once grew there in profusion had
disappeared. Instead huge urchins littered the barren sea floor, having consumed every kelp plant in sight. By contrast,
near islands where sea otters survived or had been reintroduced, kelp flourished. The discovery was important given the
nourishment kelp’s underwater forests provide for fish and other sea animals. “Kelp forests, with their high biomass and
extreme productivity are key controlling elements of coast ecosystems,” says Estes.

Everywhere Estes looked he found the same picture. Islands with sea otters had healthy kelp forests while otter-less
islands had barren sea floors littered with sea urchins but no kelp. In nearly eradicating sea otters, humans had
disrupted a critical trophic cascade: high sea otter numbers that mean low sea urchin populations that mean healthy
kelp forests. As Estes puts it: “Sea otters are clearly more than ‘just another brick in the wall’.” In fact, they are now
recognized as being a keystone species, whose position in food chains is crucial in maintaining the ecological health of an
area. They not only ensure the health of kelp forests but affect many other local species, as Estes’s investigations have
since revealed. Fish thrive in kelp forests, as do mussel beds, for example.

But most of all, those rich kelp forests – enriched

by sea otter activity – play a key role in
maintaining global environmental health. Levels
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising in
the sea as well as in the atmosphere, and it is
increasingly being absorbed by the sea as well,
making it more acidic and harmful to many
species. But Estes has calculated that healthy
kelp forests have the capacity to absorb billions
of kilograms of carbon. “Our results were eye-
opening,” he states. “The difference in annual
absorption of atmospheric carbon from kelp
photosynthesis between a world with and a
world without sea otters is somewhere between
13 and 43 billion kg (13 and 43 teragrams) of
carbon.”

Just about every strand of ocean life that Estes looked at was touched in some way. “Every species in the coastal zone is
influenced in one way or another by the ecological effects of sea otters,” he concludes. Thus, in removing sea otters
from the north Pacific, humanity – in its pursuit of fur for hats, gloves and coats – had not only grievously endangered
the species, it had disrupted a large chunk of the marine environment in the Pacific and – for good measure – damaged
our ability to deal with the impact of rising carbon dioxide levels on our planet.
Rare sea otter sighting offers sign of a resurgence,
scientists hope
Mammal spotted near California’s Laguna Beach last week and researchers say there had been word of other
sightings off San Clemente and San Mateo

Fortunately, the species had been saved from extinction in the nick of time. At least that was how it seemed in
the 80s and 90s. Then Estes made a second – disquieting – discovery. When he returned to the Aleutian
islands of Adak and Amchitka – where sea otter numbers had been steadily rising to the general good of the
islands’ kelp forests – he found their populations were now dwindling. “Something had changed, but I didn’t
know what,” he says.

Estes looked elsewhere in the archipelago and found that some sites – such as Clam Lagoon on Adak – still
possessed healthy populations. Most others showed population declines, however. Overall, about 40,000 sea
otters had disappeared over the course of a few years, he calculated. And just as sea otter numbers dropped,
so urchins reappeared on the sea floor and kelp forests began to disappear again.

But why were sea otters disappearing? Could some toxin or disease be responsible? It seemed unlikely, given
that otter losses were affecting islands that were thousands of miles apart and that some sites were
completely unaffected by otter losses.

The answer was eventually supplied by one of Estes’s colleagues, Tim Tinker, who realized two otters that he
had recently tagged for future study had gone missing just after a group of killer whales had passed Adak
Island. Then he recalled that previous losses of tagged otters had also occurred after killer whales had been
spotted in the region. Further observations confirmed the idea: killer whales had suddenly taken a shine to sea
otter flesh. Only in a few well-protected shallow bays such as Clam Lagoon could the otters escape the
attentions of their newfound predators.

Given that, prior to 1991, there had been no confirmed attacks by killer whales on sea otters, the discovery
was puzzling. So Estes looked at the history of other related species in the region and uncovered a startling
picture. Just as sea otter populations started to plunge in the 90s, so those of harbor and fur seals and then
sea lions had started to plummet in the 70s and 80s, all targeted by killer whales. But why?

The answer, Estes concluded, lay with commercial whaling that was carried out in the region after the second
world war. “Before industrial whaling, killer whales were sustained by feeding on the immense biomass of
great whales in the North Pacific and southern Bering Sea,” says Estes. By the time commercial whaling was
halted, there were virtually no great whales left for killer whales to eat, and so they expanded their diet first to
seals then to sea lions and finally to sea otters. At least that is Estes’s argument. Not every scientist accepts it.

Nevertheless the theory is intriguing. The involvement of killer whales means that a new apex predator seems
to have appeared at the top of the otter-urchin-kelp trophic cascades and reveals, if nothing else, how this
view of the food chain, from the top to the bottom, provides us with an illuminating new way at looking at
nature and its tightly interwoven components. As the naturalist John Muir once remarked: “When we try to
pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Name: __________________________________________________________________ Period: ________

How Sea Otters Help Save the Planet

How did Darwin explain the influence of cat populations on the health of clover fields?

According to Huxley’s explanation, how is the presence of old maids influencing the vigor of the British military?

The above examples which date back to the 1800s are some of the first attempts to explain a phenomenon Estes later
labeled as trophic cascades. In your own words, explain the meaning of the term trophic cascade.

What is the cause of the decline and eventually disappearance of many sea otter populations from coastal areas of the
Pacific Ocean?

How did the disappearance of the sea otters influence the coastal marine ecosystem? Comment specifically on
biodiversity (the variety of species found in an ecosystem) and specific species involved.

How does the presence of kelp influence water oxygen levels?

How does the presence of kelp influence biodiversity (the variety of species found in an ecosystem)?

How does the presence of kelp influence water carbon dioxide levels?

How much more atmospheric carbon is absorbed by kelp globally when sea otters are present in an ecosystem?

How do sea otters help to save the planet?