Another deadly challenge for the sea otter

[n2doc]

A number of the playful marine mammals are being poisoned by an ancient microbe that appears to be on an upsurge in warmer, polluted waters around the world.

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times
September 23, 2010


Pity the poor sea otter.

It's been a struggle for the furry, button-nosed critter to make a comeback since being hunted nearly to extinction along California's coast.

They get chomped by great white sharks. They must scrounge in overexploited waters to find enough shellfish to eat. Their immune systems are weakened by polluted runoff and under attack by parasites that wash into coastal waters from the feces of domestic cats and opossums.

Now it turns out that some of these playful marine mammals are also being poisoned by an ancient microbe — a type of cyanobacteria — that appears to be on an upsurge in warmer, polluted waters around the world.

The discovery was made by Melissa Miller, a state wildlife veterinarian and scientific sleuth investigating the multitude of things killing otters faster than they can reproduce. The Southern Sea Otter population has dropped for two years in a row, the U.S. Geological Survey announced last month. An estimated 2,711 otters remain in Central and Southern California waters.

The first clues came when nearly a dozen otters mysteriously died in Monterey Bay in 2007. Their carcasses were taken to the California Department of Fish and Game laboratory in Santa Cruz, where Miller and others do postmortem analyses.

more

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sea-otters-20100923,0,3239917.story

[stray cat]

1. Is a cyanobacteria of less value than a sea otter?

I prefer sea otters by far and all species are not equivalently valued in my eyes.

[n2doc]

2. There is no chance this cyanobacteria is going extinct n/t

[stuntcat]

3. k

too late to rec x(

[hunter]

4. I'd guess urban and agricultural runoff is the greater problem.

Drainage ditches don't look like anything you'd see in a natural setting. They are loaded with toxins, nutrients, and salts that favor proliferation of the cyanobacteria.

Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and motor vehicle pollutants make a deadly brew.