He doubts he will live to see the otters return. Dungeness crab was a $51.8 million fishery last year, said Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in San Francisco. Many of the species they eat, such as Dungeness crab, are prized by commercial fishermen. “These long-lived reefs are disappearing before our eyes,” said Doug Rasher, a marine ecologist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine and the study’s first author. The loss is more than cosmetic. Of those, 31 stayed in the slough. They can’t expand their coastal range any farther north than Pigeon Point in San Mateo County because the area is thick with great white sharks. Protected by the Endangered Species Act in … Since the 1990s, the Aleutian sea otter has been "functionally extinct," researchers said. “For the conservation of the sea otter, this would be huge.”. Historically there were about 16,000 sea otters from the Oregon-California border to Baja, Mexico. Without otters to keep them in check, populations of sea urchins have boomed, carpeting the sea floor in spiny spheres that mow down entire forests of kelp. He was greeted by an ocean filled with furry faces. When otter populations recovered after trapping was restricted, the reef rebounded, too. When the oceans had been healthy, the team found, nips from urchins had barely scuffed the algae’s surface. It’s a place they haven’t inhabited for nearly 200 years, but some fishermen might not be ready to welcome them back. The center responds to dozens of otter reports each year, and typically cares for young adults, according to the center’s chief executive officer Jeff Boehm. Sea otters eat 25% of their body weight a day. In the past several decades, a glut of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has acidified ocean waters, making it harder for algae to armor themselves. “The idea with reintroduction is to put otters back in an area where they used to be,” said Jessica Fujii, assistant manager of sea otter research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Dr. Estes suspects that starving orcas — perhaps deprived of their preferred whale prey by industrial whaling — have turned in desperation to the little mammals, which they can gulp down by the hundreds or thousands a year. In 1970, Jim Estes made his first trek up to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The key might be moving them into San Francisco Bay — away from great white sharks, Marin animal care centers report distemper outbreak, Marin Voice: Crab fisherman concerned ‘ropeless’ gear not best answer, | Natural resources and environment reporter, Heating failures vex Marin City public housing residents, Point Reyes National Seashore gets new superintendent, Big Basin redwoods: Drone video shows extent of wildfire over famed state park, Marin officials weigh grant requests by nonprofits. Sea otters, which can eat nearly 1,000 sea urchins a day, have seen their numbers along Alaska’s Aleutian Islands shrink by 90 percent in recent decades. The orphans learn how to feed, groom and socialize over again,. Responding to reports of injured or malnourished otters and pups eat them like popcorn, ” Dr. Estes, is! A few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town a. 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