I read the article “Pacific Sea Otters’ Failure to Thrive Confounds Wildlife Sleuths” by Ingfei Chen, which appeared in the New York Times on February 27, 2012. This article describes scientist’s anger because sea otters growth rate is continuously decreasing and scientists do not know exactly why. Dr. Tim Tinker run experiments in Washington on sea otters and their habitats. He has ideas of why the otters have trouble living, but it is extremely hard to capture an otter for experimentation. The only way to catch an otter is by trained scuba divers and if they are sound asleep, otherwise they will dive away at the sight of a human. Otters used to be the prime source of fur, but it became illegal to hunt otter in 1911. Scientists like Dr. Tinker believe that water pollution is infecting invertebrates and sea urchins, sea otters’ main source of food. With an infected food source sea otters are contracting diseases and infections. Other scientists like Dr. David Jessup, a veterinarian retired from the state wildlife agency, believes that disease causing parasites transmitted from feces from opossums and cats. This would destroy immune defenses and make contracting diseases much more likely. The thread through all the ideas is human activities. Humans are inadvertently damaging wildlife, which is directly affecting the animals that live there, including sea otters.
This article should be important to people because human activity is one of the main reasons why these harmless animals are falling in numbers. Once again, pollution in our environment is destroying habitats which are causing animals to “…reach a point of extreme nutritional stress… they will succumb to whatever particular stressor they encounter first” Whether it is a parasite or a shark attack, the weak immune system of an otter will not be able to handle the stress, and humans are a main reason behind it. Even in the Northeast, otters are losing food sources and this could be at nearby lakes or at a summer lake house.
Although I enjoyed reading this article, there are some critiques I have for the author, Ingfei Chen. One was the process in which they determine how the otters are being infected. He mentions that the otters are being tracked and tested by retrieving samples of whiskers and examining of organs, after they are dead. I would want to know how the parasites are hurting the sea otters and what a scientist will do with the samples to determine the problems in their habitat. Also the description of the capturing of a sea otter could have been described well. Chen basically said that scuba divers sneak up on otters while they are asleep and capture them with nets. I would have enjoyed a more in depth descriptions of how otters and captured and tested.
Posted for J. Flannery
I think my classmate John Flannery did great job on reviewing the sea otter article from New York times newspaper. i understood that sea otters are having trouble living in today’s society. I didn’t know that sea otters are hunted for fur and it and now it illegal to hunt sea otters. But still I don’t know why we human use sea otters’ furs it’s not soft like rabbits and chinchillas I wonder how we are going to use sea otter’s furs. And I want to know how exactly sea otters’ nest which are sea weeds that are also decreasing from ocean.
ReplyDeleteI think my classmate John Flannery did a great job reviewing, “Pacific Sea Otters’ Failure to Thrive Confounds Wildlife Sleuths.” I believe that John did a great job explaining the situation very well because he added a lot about what is happening and why these things are occurring. I think he also did a good job explaining why it is hard to catch the otters because you can only do it scuba diving when the otters are completely asleep. John also presented the part about the diseases and the effects on the otters very well. I could completely understand what was going on with the otters just from reading his first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think John did not do particularly well was the second paragraph because he did not fully explain what humans are doing to harm the otters. He also did not explain what we could do to help and stop this problem.
Without reading this I would not have known that you can only catch an otter by sneaking up on it while it is fully asleep. I would like to know more about that topic but it does not add anything else about it in the paper.