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Sea Otter Conservation: Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration, second edition offers the most updated and revised ecological knowledge for conserving sea otters and their coastal habitats. As sea otters are good indicators of ocean health, they are also keystone species, offering a stabilizing effect on ecosystems, controlling sea urchin populations that can damage kelp forests and thus curbing coastal erosion. This book synthesizes the important relationship between sea otters and conservation of themselves as well as vital marine ecosystems. Written by experts in the field, this book is structured into two sections to focus first on the latest data, practices, and hands-on research for conserving coastal ecosystems. This section offers links between sea otter presence and increased kelp, seagrass, and geological conservation. The second section focuses on the sea otter specifically, providing up-to-date research, data, and case studies regarding their genetics, habitats, and impacts of climate change. Sea Otter Conservation: Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration is a vital new edition for marine biologists, conservationists, and zoologists studying sea otters and their environmental importance.
Part I: Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration
1. Introduction
2. Kelp-urchin-otter paradigm - direct and indirect effects of sea otter presence
3. Seagrass and estuary community restoration and sea otter interactions
4. Soft sediment community restoration and the role of sea otters
5. Human perspectives of coastal ecosystems
6. Linkages between nearshore and coastal terrestrial ecosystems
7. Coastal marine ecosystem functioning - gains and losses of the fur trade
Part II: Species Conservation
8. The history of sea otter conservation
9. Why space is so important - case studies of Glacier Bay, Southeast Alaska, and the Aleutian chain
10. Nearshore study
11. New genetics research
12. Sea otters and climate change
13. Future reintroductions and restoring nearshore ecosystems
Dr Shawn Larson received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Science, has been the Curator of Conservation Research at the Seattle Aquarium for 22 years, and has been studying shark biology and ecology for 14 years. Dr Larson has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and abstracts on the biology and ecology of marine animals. Dr Larson has organized and run international shark conservation workshops for over 12 years and is currently a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Northeast Pacific Shark Specialist Group tasked with defining the conservation status of all shark species in the northeastern Pacific.
Dr James Bodkin is a Research Wildlife Biologist Emeritus at the United States Geological Survey based at the Alaska Science Center. His research expertise includes population biology and ecology of marine mammals, population estimation, predator/prey relations, marine conservation, and more. He is a member of the Society for Conservation Biology, the American Society of Mammalogy, the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and the Wildlife Society.
Dr Erin Foster is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Cetacean Research Program at the Pacific Biological Station for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She received her PhD from the University of Victoria, with a dissertation on sea otters and soft-sediment flora and fauna. Her research work includes examining the roles of sea otters in structuring soft sediment communities, altering eelgrass reproductive strategies and genetic diversity, and ancient Indigenous maricultural practices.
