The return of sea otters to historic habitats can restore ecosystems and bring economic benefits — but their ravenous appetites can also threaten the food security of remote indigenous communities.
Sea otters are tourist magnets--and voracious eaters. Not everyone is happy about their comeback off the coast of British Columbia.Sea otters are tourist magnets--and voracious eaters. Not everyone is happy about their comeback off the coast of British Columbia.Sea otter populations are rebounding in the eastern North Pacific. There, they devour huge quantities of shellfish and other marine critters that people like to eat, too.
"It's like whale watching, right? Who has the money to put these big boats into the water and advertise? Usually, it's not the locals," saysShe was part of a research team that recentlyindigenous people's feelings about coexisting with sea otters. Because the otters"eat the same foods as we do," says Wilson,"the impact for us is fairly critical."
"It's been simmering and I think it's slowly coming to a head," says Gregr, who has heard anecdotal reports of illegal otter killings in British Columbia."Sea otters are cute and cuddly, and the public tends to be on the conservation side. So it's difficult to persuade some people that we should maybe be managing these species a little bit more actively to help communities protect their food supply.
Years of careful fieldwork let them estimate a loss to fisheries of about 7.3 million Canadian dollars, because of otters gobbling up valuable seafood resources like geoduck clams and Dungeness crabs. The greatest potential financial benefits from otters, however, came from tourism. Based on surveys with tourists, the research team calculated that the otters could bring in some 42 million Canadian dollars in ecotourism.
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