The multi-decadal study, carried out in central California, could hold lessons for British Columbia, whose sea otter population was nearly exterminated through decades of poaching.
The return of sea otters to a California salt marsh helped curb ravenous crabs and prevent its drowning — a lesson scientists say British Columbia could learn from.
Ravenous eaters, an adult sea otter consumes about a quarter of its body weight every day in order to keep up its body temperature in cool waters. Salt marshes up and down the west coast of North America face a number of pressures — from city building and industrial development to invasive species and sea level rise.
A ‘wild’ positive effect In a study published in the journal Nature this week, Hughes and his U.S. and Canadian colleagues used aerial photography and ground measurements over decades to track the top predator’s impact on five tidal creeks. Over the coming years, 89 individuals originally from Alaska’s Amchitka Island and Prince William Sound were released in the bay. The Vancouver Island population grew at a rate of nearly 19 per cent a year until 1995, although that growth rate has been cut in half in recent years.
“It depends on who you talk to,” Watson said. “We’ve spent 150 years without sea otters. Throughout that time we’ve come to expect an ecosystems that doesn’t have a predator.” Could a California slough’s success be replicated in B.C.? Watson said nobody in B.C. has documented sea otters benefiting salt marshes like in California.
“A major oil spill could affect very large portions of the current range, making the species especially vulnerable,” notes COSEWIC in its risk assessment.
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