Loss of sea otters accelerating the effects of climate change:
The impacts of predator loss and climate change are combining to devastate living reefs that have defined Alaskan kelp forests for centuries, according to new research published in Science.
"We discovered that massive limestone reefs built by algae underpin the Aleutian Islands' kelp forest ecosystem," said Douglas Rasher, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the lead author of the study. "However, these long-lived reefs are now disappearing before our eyes, and we're looking at a collapse likely on the order of decades rather than centuries."
The coral-like reefs, built by the red alga Clathromorphum nereostratum, are being ground down by sea urchins. Sea urchins exploded in number after their predator, the Aleutian sea otter, became functionally extinct in the 1990's. Without the urchins' natural predator to keep them in check, urchins have transformed the seascape—first by mowing down the dense kelp forests, and now by turning their attention to the coralline algae that form the reef.
Clathromorphum produces a limestone skeleton that protects the organism from grazers and, over hundreds of years, forms a complex reef that nurtures a rich diversity of sea life. With kelp gone from the menu, urchins are now boring through the alga's tough protective layer to eat the alga—a process that has become much easier due to climate change.
"Ocean warming and acidification are making it difficult for calcifying organisms to produce their shells, or in this case, the alga's protective skeleton," said Rasher, who led the international team of researchers that included coauthors Jim Estes from UC Santa Cruz and Bob Steneck from University of Maine. "This critical species has now become highly vulnerable to urchin grazing—right as urchin abundance is peaking. It's a devasting combination."
Journal Reference:
Douglas B. Rasher, Robert S. Steneck, Jochen Halfar, et al. Keystone predators govern the pathway and pace of climate impacts in a subarctic marine ecosystem [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7515)
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Saturday September 12 2020, @04:38AM (1 child)
The glommer was an artificial creature genetically engineered by Klingons as a predator to hunt, kill, and eat tribbles. [fandom.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @04:54AM
Increase of Runaway1956's definitely adding to the amount of hot air, and aeresol bullshit, and thus the melting of the American mind and the Greenland Ice cap. Poor Runaway. Lucky he is upslope? But the backflooding of the Mississippi will definitely change his perspective.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:50AM (6 children)
so, I'm not a trump person, I'm not a climate change denier. I have taken a lot of college physics and chemistry. i never bothered looking into climate change, and until recently just went with what most scientists said, since they know better.
sometimes scientists don't know better, but statistical chance of that is low. remember back in the day, all scientists were warning us of nuclear winter and that faggot sagan spouting it for the dumb tv audience? in the 1980 it was all the hype. Well, that was determined to be false in the 90's, and the real math shows temp would be a little colder in the north. no nuclear winter, just an extra two weeks of wearing a coat.
then we had the 1st global warming craze. all the scientists were sure by oh, about 2020, manhattan would be underwater and we'd be in a catastrophe. now they've moved the goalpost.
yes, climate is changing. if you look at earth's historical temps, it does that a lot, long before our machines started making gas. the slope of the curve is not any different than what has been observed before. this tells us climate changes for some astronomical-level planet-level reasons. now if we look at the co2 curve - that goes up and down naturally too. and now it's going up much faster than before - starting right about the time of the industrial revolution. but the actual temp is changing how it has before. that tells me while co2 might be doing something, another thing that naturally happens is doing a fuck ton more, so the co2 is as significant as a rounding error.
so is there climate change? yes. is it man-made? scientists say yes, but looking at it, I'm not seeing it. the projections for Future temperatures slope up higher than anything before. but none of the collected data so far shows the temp actually rising that fast. the last prediction of this quick upward slope just keeps moving off more and more as we come closer, and the real upward slope recorded keeps on track with what the earth did long before we had tools and pants.
and now it's the sea otters. yeah. i'm sure it is.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:37AM (1 child)
It's a little hotter [ca.gov], yeah. Like, dystopian [youtu.be] hotter. Not during that video, though, that's all ash in the air, producing that effect.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 12 2020, @10:55PM
so your counter-point to the recorded average earth temperature not fluctuating more than normal is "there's a fire?"
it's getting hotter. which happens on earth literally since it became earth. temp goes up and down. look at the damn data.
is it man-made - i don't see any data saying yes. co2 going up more than normal - absolutely. is it causing this, out of earth's thousands of natural global warming cycle - no.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @10:47AM (1 child)
The sad thing about your post is that, rather than mourning the loss of the sea otter, which make the world a poorer place, you seem to be shilling for oil interests, who are the ones most afraid of movements to reduce atmospheric CO2.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 12 2020, @10:58PM
what I'm saying is any data i look at does not correlate co2 emissions to global warming. since the warming cycle now has happened thousands of times without this huge co2 spike, many times much faster. since the co2 spike is higher than anything in earth's history, and the warming cycle is completely average, i don't see a how you can say one is causing the other. now as qualitatively proven, it does cause warming. but it's looking like to such an irrelevant extent that it's not measurable.
seriously, look at the co2 spike graphs, and the temp graphs. yes, one goes up while the other goes up. but nowhere nearly proportional, and looking at history, most of the times the temp goes up w/o any co2 spike.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:01PM (1 child)
So you're stupid. Got it. Education is what you make of it I guess.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 12 2020, @11:01PM
and you're not replying to a single point I made or the collected data, and just saying "so you're stupid." I may be, but if you're unable to argue a point, I'm a hell of a lot smarter than you. because I'm arguing with numbers and logic around those numbers, while saying - please prove me wrong. you're arguing with nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:31AM (1 child)
No doubt once we're all gone the grass will grow freely
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:22PM
It won't be too long. Once we cut enough trees to fuck up the monsoons and other seasonal rain cycles completely, the wars will start
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @04:22PM (8 children)
"the Aleutian sea otter, became functionally extinct in the 1990's"
this is the kind of shit that pisses me the fuck off. there would have been some dead humans if i lived up there and knew what was going on. fair warning first. all out war second. Where's all the militant animal rights orgs when you need them?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:29PM (7 children)
If you read TFA you would see that what is driving them to extinction is that some killer whales have learnt to hunt them. The FA claims that a single killer whale can eat 1800 a year. So if you want to save the otters you need to hunt the killer whales.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday September 13 2020, @01:41AM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday September 13 2020, @02:19AM (4 children)
I wonder how much of that is more orcas due to the end of hunting pressure from humans.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 13 2020, @04:56AM (3 children)
Basically, the theory is that orcas are cleaning out the food chain in the Aleutians because their regular food supply ran out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:17AM
Ten ton killer whales eating 65lb (~30kg) otters is proportionally equivalent to a 100kg human eating 300 grams. (2/3 lb). That's a reasonable meal.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:38AM (1 child)
Considering that the big whales, bears, and seals are now more numerous than in the 1950s, I don't think their theory holds much water.
As an AC below points out, an otter is barely enough to taste, even compared to seals in the same ecosystem. If they were depending on otters for sustenance, the orcas would have already entirely starved and died out.
More likely orcas were observed snacking on otters much as wolves snack on mice -- because they're handy -- and they leapt to the usual OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING conclusion.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @07:18AM
Barely enough to taste? It is equivalent to you eating half a pound of ground beef.
Big whales are only slowly coming back, I don't see how bears are relevant unless they are also snacking on the otters, and the real question about whales and seals would be the (whale|seal)/orca ratio, not the absolute numbers. If the orcas are coming back faster than their prey they are still going to be hungry.
The linked article implies that it is only a few that have learned to hunt the otters. It is just that those few eat five or six per day (= 1800 per year. ) It is not going to take many of them to put a big dent in a total population of 90,000. Fifty killer-whales would clean them out in a year.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:11AM
Slight correction. It wasn't actually from the TFA. I got curious because TFA didn't mention what was actually causing the loss of otters and DDG'd it. The killer-whale theory is from : https://www.animallaw.info/article/where-have-all-sea-otters-gone [animallaw.info]
The second major killer is disease from kitty-litter (and opossum)s. "One-quarter of the 281 sea otters found dead last year have been linked to a pair of protozoan parasites, Toxoplasma gondii and Sacrocystis neurona, that are known to breed in cats and opossums.". (I'd be betting on people flushing kitty-litter over the opossums.)
Oil spills killed a few thousand back in the 90's, but they are pulse events and don't explain an ongoing decline.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.