THE SPECTACULAR RETURN OF SEA OTTERS ALONG THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA HAS LED TO THE REBIRTH OF KELP FORESTS AND OTHER THREATENED HABITATS. THE SECRET? THEIR APPETITE FOR SHELLFISH, SAYS ISABELLE GROC
For the past 30 years, Jane Watson has witnessed one of the most extraordinary underwater transformations. Year after year, on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, she has been diving at the same sites, watching areas known as ‘sea urchin barrens’ transform into beautiful forests of 2m-tall kelp. The difference between the two environments is striking.
Watson is an ecologist at Vancouver Island University with a particular interest in kelp forests. Whenever she explores a sea urchin barren, she finds herself floating in a pink world due to the overwhelming presence of pink coralline algae. Invertebrates such as sea urchins, abalone, chitons and sea cucumbers, which thrive in the open, are all easy to see. “It’s like being on a grassland because it is an exposed environment,” Watson says. In stark contrast, diving among the waving brown kelp is like hiking in a forest teeming with juvenile fish.
Behind this transformation is the voracious appetite of an extraordinarily photogenic creature – the sea otter Enhydra lutris. It occurs in western North America and the far east of Asia, and as its name suggests is entirely marine. (Confusingly, though, it is not the only otter found in coastal waters – the Eurasian otter Lutra lutra also thrives on seashores and sea lochs, for example.)
Esta historia es de la edición August 2016 de BBC Knowledge (Asia Edition).
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