SW Alaskan Sea Otters Listed As Threatened Species - ADN

[hatrack]

Sea otters that live from southwestern Cook Inlet to the tip of the Aleutian Chain will now get more federal protection and a biological investigation into why their population has crashed by more than two-thirds since 1980. Alaska's southwest stock of northern sea otters will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, officials with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday.

If published today in the Federal Register as scheduled, the decision will take effect Sept. 8. Within a few months, officials hope to appoint a team that will find out what, if anything, people can do to help the animals recover, said biologist Doug Burn, sea otter team leader for the agency in Anchorage. "There's been reduced abundance in places, but to our knowledge, they have not been completely wiped out from any areas," he said. "That leads me to be hopeful."

Listing otters as threatened will likely have little impact on subsistence hunting by Alaska Natives or commercial fishing, but it will trigger more studies and surveys of the near-shore waters where the furry marine mammals forage for sea urchins and other shellfish, Burn said. Identifying specific areas critical to the animals will be one major chore.

The sea otter decline comes amid other mysterious shifts in the marine ecosystem near Alaska, with some species rising and some dropping fast. Driven largely by studies of the endangered Steller sea lion, more than $120 million has been spent over the past five years to investigate marine climate change, food problems, disease, contaminants and increased predation by killer whales. New sea otter studies by federal agencies, the Alaska SeaLife Center and independent scientists are under way.


EDIT

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6798453p-6688150c.html

[driver8]

1. I lived on Adak, in the middle of the Aleutians...the sea otters

were everywhere!! We lived by the beach and used to go down all the time. It was rare that we didn't see at least one sea otter.

This is very sad news.