Sea Otters May Be Global Warming Warriors

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sea otters, habitat, kelp
Sea otters convene in a kelp bed near Kodiak Island, Alaska. (Image credit: Arthur Morris)

Sea otters might be on the frontlines of the fight against global warming, according to a new study showing the fur-coated swimmers keep sea urchin populations in check, which in turn allows carbon dioxide-sucking kelp forests to prosper.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, looked at 40 years of data on otters and kelp blooms from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. They said they found that sea otters have a positive indirect effect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins.

The study, published Friday (Sept. 7) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, found kelp forests can absorb 12 times more carbon dioxide with otters around than if the plant were subject to sea urchins.

The authors acknowledge that otters probably aren't the answer to rising CO2 levels, a major contributing factor to global warming, but the researchers say their study illustrates the impact animals can have on the atmosphere.

"Right now, all the climate change models and proposed methods of sequestering carbon ignore animals. But animals the world over, working in different ways to influence the carbon cycle, might actually have a large impact," UC Santa Cruz professor Chris Wilmers, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. "If ecologists can get a better handle on what these impacts are, there might be opportunities for win-win conservation scenarios, whereby animal species are protected or enhanced, and carbon gets sequestered."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Megan Gannon
Megan Gannon
Live Science Contributor
Megan has been writing for Live Science and Space.com since 2012. Her interests range from archaeology to space exploration, and she has a bachelor's degree in English and art history from New York University. Megan spent two years as a reporter on the national desk at NewsCore. She has watched dinosaur auctions, witnessed rocket launches, licked ancient pottery sherds in Cyprus and flown in zero gravity. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.