Sea otter : A Tale of Two Kelp Forests September 27, 2007

“A tale of two kelp forests: sea otters and ecosystem dynamics in the Aleutian Archipelago and the Commander Islands, Russia” by Dr. Tim Tinker, Research Biologist with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz

Sea otter populations in the central and western Aleutian Islands have declined by 75-95% over the past 15-20 years, whereas populations in the nearby Commander Islands have remained roughly stable during this same period. There are no obvious environmental explanations for these disparate patterns (the Aleutian and Commander islands are physically and biologically quite similar), other than that the sea otter populations in the two areas have apparently been subjected to different attack rates by transient killer whales. Because of the differing population trajectories and the role of sea otters as keystone predators, the two kelp forest ecosystems that were once very similar are now quite different. Of course, conducting research in the remotest regions of Alaska and the Russian Far East presents extraordinary challenges, and the unusual behavior of the sea otter biologists attempting to work in these areas has also been documented.

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