Sea Beavers Turn Out To Help Control Climate Change

Liputan6.com, Jakarta – The sea otter population that plummeted from being hunted for its fur in the 19th century has now recovered. This restoration will not only improve their ecosystems, but can also enhance their role as carbon sinks.

Launching the BBC, Monday (20/9/2021), sea otters are the furthest animals on earth with a hair density of 700 times denser than the hair on a human head. Sea otters play a role in maintaining the seaweed forest ecosystem in the North Pacific.

According to Brent Hughes, a marine ecologist who studies coastal habitats at California’s Sonoma State University, other animals eat more than they weigh. Due to lack of fat, beavers the sea will eat as much as a quarter of their weight in a day to warm themselves.

Sea otters can help ecosystems capture carbon from the atmosphere. They store it as biomass and detritus in the deep ocean, preventing it from turning back into climate-damaging carbon dioxide.

In the past, these furry animals were scattered in the coastal waters of the North Pacific Ocean, from Baja California to Alaska. In the 1700s to 1800s, the fur trade took place, resulting in 2000 being hunted. Since then, conservation efforts have been made to restore the sea otter population.

The disappearance of sea beavers has an impact on seagrass forest ecosystems. James Estes, a diver in the 1970s, noticed that the seagrass forests of the Aleutian Islands looked more like an underwater desert than when there were sea beavers.

“They (sea otters) have a huge impact on ecosystems,” said Heidi Pearson, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast.

“Without them the stability of the ecosystem will be lost,” he added.

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