Posted by Steve on December 15, 2002 at 00:43:25:
In Reply to: Seahunt, Steve, et al...Please take this in the spirit it was intended posted by msblucow on December 14, 2002 at 15:17:13:
"So here we are now. Blaming about 2,300 sea otters for the decline of Western Civilization as we know it. Gee I guess the 30 million people living in California, most within 10 miles of the ocean have NOTHING to do with it. I guess it's the sea otters, with their fantastically high metabolisms, that have extracted millions of tons of shellfish from coastal waters for the last 30 years or so."
The 2300 population figure you quote is a California number I presume because I've read their number worldwide have increased to over 150,000. So 2300 X 15 X 365 = 12,590,500 pounds of sea food per year consumed by otters(in California). So millions of tons over 30 years isn't far from wrong.
You're not doing very well in making your case that Otters aren't ecological disasters as Seahunt mentioned last week.
"Yeah, that's it! Get rid of those cute little water rats and they'll be plenty left over for the rest of us!"
Fishermen and Otters are in direct conflict for the resource and when the otters were gone the industry flourished so you're probably right again. At least the fishermen abide by size limitation and species harvesting to preserve the next generation. I kinda like the big water rats but they are very destructive and counter productive to a growing healthy ecosystem.