Alaska Sea Otters' Disappearance a Mystery

By Yereth Rosen, Reuters

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Feb. 8) - When Russian explorers first saw sea otters bobbing in the waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands in the mid-18th century, they knew they had discovered a money maker.

The otters' fur "is so far superior in length, beauty, blackness and gloss of hair to the river otters' pelts that these can scarcely be compared to it," wrote German naturalist Georg Steller, who accompanied legendary mariner Vitus Bering on his Alaska expeditions.

Russian and American hunters later wiped out nearly all of Alaska's sea otters, whose luxurious fur became known as "soft gold." The otters were saved from extinction after a 1911 treaty banned the commercial hunt.

But sea otters are once again vanishing from Alaska's 1,000- mile Aleutian chain and other parts of southwestern Alaska. This time, there is no obvious explanation.

Alaska's sea otter population numbered 100,000 to 137,000 in the 1980s, with its core in the Aleutians and western Alaska. But numbers fell 70 percent from 1992 to 2000, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some Aleutian populations are down to just a few thousand, about five percent of 1980s levels, the agency said.

Their disappearance could cause wider ecological harm by upsetting the food chain in the icy coastal waters.

Otters eat sea urchins, which feed on kelp. Without the otters to control urchin populations, undersea kelp forests are being mowed down, scientists warn.

"Now across the Aleutian archipelago there are these vast areas that are just deforested kelp beds," said Jim Estes, a Santa Cruz, California-based U.S. Geological Survey ecologist and Alaska sea otter expert. That could hurt fish that dwell in kelp beds, Estes said.

NO OBVIOUS ANSWERS

Although there are no obvious answers, some theories have emerged to explain the sea otters' problems.

One theory blames climate change for disrupting marine prey-predator balances. Another cites the accumulation of contaminants, including those carried from southern latitudes by marine and atmospheric currents. And some say conflicts with commercial vessels may be contributing to the decline.

One controversial theory, advanced by Estes and others, is that widespread commercial whaling until the 1970s triggered cascading collapses of North Pacific marine mammals. Under this theory, killer whales are now hunting sea otters because their normal prey -- other whales, sea lions and harbor seals -- are scarce.

Many environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of not doing enough to protect the otters.

Two conservation groups sued the federal government in December to get the dwindling population listed as endangered.

The California-based plaintiffs, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network, submitted a petition in 2000 for an endangered listing.

"We've been trying to work with the Bush administration for three years, and they haven't done anything," said Brent Plater, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Alaska office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded by noting that in September 2002 it proposed an Endangered Species Act listing. That proposal is still being evaluated.

FISHERMEN NOT WORRIED

For commercial fishermen, the spectre of new sea otter protections is not yet a concern because no one is directly blaming commercial harvests for the decline, industry representatives said. Fishing was curtailed to protect the western Alaska Steller sea lion, listed as endangered in 1997.

"The industry is not paying a whole lot of attention to the sea otter situation as it did to the sea lions. With the sea lions, there was an implication, rightly or not, that fishing was depriving them of prey," said Paul MacGregor, general counsel for the At Sea Processors Association, a Seattle-based industry group.

Estes said sea otters deserve the same protections as those afforded the sea lions. Sea lion numbers have dropped about 85 percent since 1960, but sea otters are "at least as badly off as they are," Estes said. "And the numbers are still going down. It's very discouraging."