Central Coast otters battle climate change September 13, 2012
Sea otters are now being touted for helping to fight global
warming, according to a pair of scientists from UC Santa Cruz.
[MercuryNews] The reasoning is really fairly simple: kelp
removes carbon from the environment, sea urchins are ravenous
creatures eating as much as 30 feet of kelp forests a month and
the sea otter’s favorite food is urchin. So, more sea otters
equal more vibrant undersea kelp forests and lower carbon
dioxide levels, which have gone up 40 percent since the
Industrial Revolution. James Estes, a UCSC biologist, and Chris
Wilmers, a UCSC environmental studies professor, found that if
otters covered the globe, the resulting growth in kelp forests
would strip 10 percent of the carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. However, because sea otter habitat only ranges along
the West Coast of North America, with the number of otters off
of California estimated at just more than 2,700, the actual
impact is significantly lower. More significant