Otters, Algae, and Plants, Oh My

“Otters, Algae, and Plants, Oh My” audio

Explore other Botanize! episodes and read about sea otters, tropic cascades, kelp, and eelgrass.

“Otters, Algae, and Plants, Oh My” transcript

Melissa Petruzzello: Hello again. You are listening to Botanize!, and I’m your host, Melissa Petruzzello, Encyclopædia Britannica’s plant and environmental science editor. In my first episode, I promised to share stories about plants, algae, and fungi. I’ve done pretty good with terrestrial plants so far, so today we’re going to talk about some algae and a marine plant, and we’ll leave fungi for another day. To that end, I have brought on with me Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a fellow Californian. Hey, Kyle, thanks for being here!

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Kyle Shanebeck: Thanks for having me.

Melissa Petruzzello: Kyle studies sea otters, and so, to boost up the cuteness factor of the series, he is going to talk with us today about otters and their incredible influence on some important photosynthesizers of coastal marine ecosystems. Kyle has his Master’s in ecology from the University of Bremen in Germany and he actually studies the intestinal parasites of sea otters, so he’s also boosting the ick factor of the series just a little bit. I jest, I jest. Most of his fieldwork is based in California, and he has quite a history of working with otters there. He’s been a research intern with the U.S. Geological Survey and U.C. Santa Cruz and has also worked with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So Kyle is very familiar with otter ecology, and today we’re going to talk about two examples where the top predator is important for the well-being of marine flora at the opposite end of the food chain, specifically kelp and eelgrass. These of course house and feed numerous other marine organisms and are vital to these coastal ecosystems. So, Kyle, let’s talk about giant kelp forests. Fill us in on where they’re found and who lives in them and what makes them special.

Kyle Shanebeck: Well, I’m glad to hear that in your Botanize! podcasts you weren’t only focusing on plants and are including algae and fungi too! Because I was going to have to talk about the fact that the algae are not true plants, and I was going to be shocked that you were including me in this. But I’m glad that you’re trying to branch out, and recognizing how adorable megafauna are going to be helpful for this cause. As we know, otters are super cute, and everybody loves them so.

Melissa Petruzzello: So cute, Kyle. You’re lucky!

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Kyle Shanebeck: Well, yeah, so to your question: Sea otters exist, as you mentioned, in kelp forests, which are made up predominantly of one species of kelp called giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera. They’re found pretty much all along Eastern Pacific from California to Alaska as well as in parts in Australia, New Zealand, South America, even some parts of the Atlantic, which is pretty cool. Giant kelp, as well as the other group of large brown algae that’s known as bull kelp (Nereocystis is the genus, in case you’re interested)—they are what we like to call in ecology a “founder species.” That’s mainly because algae don’t have a root system (obvious—uh, well maybe not obviously). I don’t know if people would know, but they have something called a “holdfast,” which is a rootlike structure at the base of the kelp, and it’s not meant to gather nutrients like plant roots are meant to gather nutrients. Instead, it’s meant to do what it sounds like—to hold fast onto the rocks so that the algae can stay and not be pulled away by the current. But why we call them the founder species is because this actually creates a new environment within the ocean ecosystem, where they’re actually reducing water currents. Basically, just like a wall break like we use for docks for boats: they’ll create a large wall so it breaks the current and makes it calmer within the harbor. In the same way, a large algae does something similar. It slows the current and allows for smaller species to thrive where they normally wouldn’t be able to. Hence, they are a founder.

Melissa Petruzzello: Wow, they’re really cool, and I’m so excited to talk about them! Historically, there’s been quite a range of overlap between where sea otters were found and the giant kelp forests. So where are otters found now, and what happened to change their distribution?

Kyle Shanebeck: Oh my, yeah. Sea otters are the kelp forest’s most famous resident. Well, they do love kelp forests. They’re not always found in kelp forests, but it is certainly one of their favorite habitats. I know we’ll talk a little bit later about another one that they like to live in. But, historically, yeah, there is a very important connection between sea otters and kelp forests, mainly because they are one of the main apex predators of the kelp forest. They used to be found all the way from Baja California in Mexico all the way across the Pacific Rim up and around Russia to Japan, which is a crazy-huge distribution from what we think about otters right now. But, as viewers may know, otters have beautiful, adorable fur that’s very warm and fuzzy, and, back in the day, people did not have as much qualms about killing cute fuzzy animals to wear them, and the fur trade drove the otters nearly to extinction. In the late 1800s they were almost completely extirpated from most of their historical range. And so today, now they’re a protected species and they have three main subpopulations. They can still be found in Russia. And—fun fact—they’re even now just barely touching the tip of the Japanese islands in the north. So there’s, like, a couple otters that I heard about recently at a biannual meeting of otter biologists. There’s a couple of otters that have just started swimming over and just touching Japan and being like, “Hey, what’s up?” And then they’re also found in Alaska, which was, you know, probably the biggest population, and they’re doing really well there. And then in California, there was, is, the smallest population. It was only 40 animals that were left in California, which is, it’s amazing that they have come back so well.

Melissa Petruzzello: Wow. So they were hunted and then locally extincted in many kelp-forested areas. And what was the impact of that on the rest of the ecosystem? Can you touch a bit about how the absence of an apex predator affects algae when otters don’t even eat giant kelp?

Kyle Shanebeck: Oh, Melissa, you know I would be more than happy to talk about that. Yes. It brings up one of my favorite terms in ecology: “trophic cascades,” which is a fascinating aspect of how organisms interact and how food webs can basically instruct what is found in certain habitats and what is not as well as how dramatic effects, like the near extinction of an animal, can really damage ecosystems. I have prepared this because, if I may be so bold, I have a quote from an article from Encyclopædia Britannica. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this wonderful online institution?

Melissa Petruzzello: [Laughter] Let’s hear it!

Kyle Shanebeck: We may define trophic cascade as “an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of a top predator involving reciprocal changes in the relative population of predator and prey throughout the food chain, which often results in dramatic changes in an ecosystem and nutrient cycling.” Whew, what a mouthful. Did you write it?

Melissa Petruzzello: I did not, no, that’s probably my coworker.

Kyle Shanebeck: Put it in simpler terms, especially in the system we’re talking about, basically, what happens is otters eat urchins, urchins eat kelp. Though I should preface, they do eat kelp, often pieces of kelp that may be found on the ocean floor. But most damagingly, urchins have this really bad habit of just eating the holdfast. Which you would think, “Oh, that doesn’t damage the whole thing.” But the minute you have urchins, they just eat around the base of the holdfast, and then all of a sudden the kelp is not connected anymore to the rocks. And kelp has all these wonderful air bladders to keep it upright in the water column, and those air bladders make it float, and, therefore, the whole thing just floats away. So, actually, the urchin doesn’t even have to eat all of the kelp. It has to eat, like, a tiny fraction of it, just the holdfast, and then, bam, gone. So this obviously is, you know, your viewers or your listeners, excuse me, may kind of suspect already that this may mean that a small amount of urchins can really damage a kelp forest. So then a lot of urchins may really damage a kelp forest! So, in this example, we have a control aspect of an apex predator: otters are eating the urchins, keeping their populations lower, so that they’re not devastating kelp forests. But when otters were nearly extinct and completely gone, we have a trophic cascade where the loss of otters then increases urchin populations, which then decimate kelp forests. And, obviously, systems are never as simple as that; it’s a nice little package we can put it into. There are other predators that do eat urchins, but otters had definitely a disproportionate effect on them.

Melissa Petruzzello: Anecdotally, when I was a child, we had a small sailboat in southern California, and we would sail over to the Channel Islands. I remember crossing over really enormous swaths of giant kelp forests. You could see it below the water, since they grow 200 feet in length. But the last few times I’ve been out there, I haven’t seen it like that. And that’s not to say those forests still aren’t out there. Maybe we took a different route or whatever, but it was surprising to not see them in that way. Are there plans to reintroduce otters back to their historic ranges, or do you think their populations will grow enough to expand the range? (As you mentioned, those ones now reaching Japan a little bit.) Until then, what are humans doing to help maintain the kelp forest from the urchin attack?

Kyle Shanebeck: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, yes is the short answer. Reintroductions actually have already occurred. I live and study in Canada now, as you mentioned, and some of the work I’ll be doing is in British Columbia, and that is because the otters were reintroduced there in the early ’70s. And they’re actually doing really well. They were transplanted from the Alaskan population. So, as I mentioned before, we have three subpopulations now, which are generally considered to be subspecies of each other. So the northern sea otter, or the Alaskan sea otter, is the one that we have in B.C., and they’re doing great. In California specifically, the population is doing well, but it’s not growing and expanding as fast as conservationists would really like. In fact, they’re still pretty much limited in the range they have been for the last 20 years or so. Just south of San Francisco, and there’s this place called Half Moon Bay, and Half Moon Bay is probably the northernmost point, pretty much. Sometimes animals will move up and down a bit, but that’s about the northern limit. And then in the south they stop at around Santa Barbara. There are fears that shark attack may be one of the reasons for that. That’s because there’s some rookeries of seals and sea lions off of San Francisco on one of the islands up there, and so there’s lots of white sharks in the area. And also there’s quite a bit of juvenile white sharks in the Santa Barbara area as well. So that may be one of the reasons that they just aren’t being able to spread more. And, also, otters in California are resource-limited. In Alaska we have all these beautiful muddy intertidal flats and lots of chain islands that create lots of area and space for invertebrates to be growing, which means lots of food and habitat opportunity for otters. But in California we’re on a coastal shelf, our plate is tilting us up, and, therefore, our coastline is very up-and-down. And so otter habitat in California is kind of 2-D. Obviously, that’s not always the case but the generality. They just have a lot less space to kind of spread and for resources to be available. So, for California otters in particular, there’s some hopes to transplant the population, maybe to Oregon or something like that, in hopes that we can help them continue to grow and expand.

Melissa Petruzzello: All right, so there is hope that human intervention can help them reach new ranges, in addition to their own population growth. So that’s good to hear. Let’s switch gears a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, and talk about another system where otters affect the lower levels of the food chain: eelgrass meadows. What can you tell us about eelgrass?

Kyle Shanebeck: Oh my goodness, a plant finally! I’m sure you’re glad to hear it. Yes, eelgrass is a really quite beautiful marine grass. Once again, its scientific name is Zostera marina. I know that you were waiting for that! And—fun fact—it is the most widely spread marine angiosperm in the world. It is a true plant, not a seaweed, and it grows all over the world, so it’s pretty much everywhere. And, like giant kelp, eelgrass is very important habitat. Mainly it’s because it’s a nursery for various species of marine invertebrates and finfish. We didn’t get into it too much earlier, but, as a founder species, it creates a beautiful microhabitat. What that generally means for fish is a safe place to grow at a young age, and that is one of the main benefits that comes from that. Kelp forests have thousands of fish and invertebrate species that like to live there and call it home because it’s kind of safe and calmer, and eelgrass works pretty similarly. There’s a lot of young fish or invertebrates that will live in eelgrass and then migrate out once they’re adults, or stay, depending on the species. But eelgrass is threatened in the U.S., and that’s due to a lot of different things. Our coastal ecosystems tend to be very affected by human activity, such as dredging, erosion, shoreline construction, and, very important recently, a word I might throw out there called “eutrophication,” which is basically nutrient runoff from things like agriculture. Agricultural runoff is coming into marine ecosystems, and there’s all these excess nutrients that encourage a lot of algae growth. You might think, “Oh, that’s great. You know, the more nutrients mean we’re encouraging growth,” but this is actually bad for plants like eelgrass because algae growth will just expand and explode. It actually blocks out the Sun from other plants, like large brown algaes or eelgrass. Especially since a lot of the algae in eelgrass ecosystems are epiphytic, they like to attach onto the eelgrass itself.

Melissa Petruzzello: Oh, okay, gotcha. So the eelgrass has been suffering a bit from algae overgrowth that kind of smothers it. I was reading that these researchers were studying a trophic cascade, another trophic cascade with otters, related to the recovery of an otter population in an area with eelgrass. Can you tell us more about those interactions and what happened when the otters returned?

Kyle Shanebeck: Yeah, so that particular study, it was in the Elkhorn Slough, which is a saltwater estuary in the middle of Monterey Bay. So, if anybody’s familiar with the area, we have Santa Cruz on the north end and then Monterey, the city, on the south end, which is where the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium is (wonderful place!). And the Elkhorn Slough is right in the middle of the bay. And, like I said, the California coastline is pretty 2-D: we have tall coastlines—it’s pretty rugged—but every so often, like at the Elkhorn Slough, we have a nice estuary where otters have actually begun to repopulate and expand up into the estuary. And there’s lots of eelgrass there. This was a wonderful opportunity for researchers, because, as otters are returning, you can kind of watch and see—“okay, what happens now?—and what they found is that when otters returned to the Elkhorn Slough, eelgrass started do much better, started to thrive, actually. It turns out that otters don’t only have this kind of top-down effect in kelp forests, due to their predation of urchins, but they can actually do this in eelgrass systems as well, because another favorite food of otters is crabs—because crabs are delicious, obviously (who doesn’t love some crab legs?)—and crabs are superabundant in these estuaries. Unfortunately for the eelgrass, crabs eat lots of small invertebrates—that’s one of their main food sources—and these small invertebrates actually are the ones that eat algae that then grows on the eelgrass. So, with the increase of new things like nutrients in estuaries from agricultural runoff, we have this epiphytic algae. I keep saying “algae” and “algee.” You see, I flip in between. I’ve worked in Europe and in the U.S., and I just have both in my mind now; I can’t help it.

Melissa Petruzzello: Oh, you’re like Britannica! We switch back and forth too.

Kyle Shanebeck: Oh, see, perfect! I’m in great company! But these algae populations blow up then. And the invertebrates, of course, would probably do very well because then they’d have lots more to eat, but crabs are much better at eating invertebrates than the invertebrates are at avoiding the crabs. And, basically, the crabs were limiting how much these invertebrates could prevent the overgrowth. So, when otters came back, they are our heroes once again, and basically the predation of these fuzzy adorable little jerks acted to control crab populations, allowing for the eelgrass to recover.

Melissa Petruzzello: Whoa. So, instead of the three-player system—otters eat urchins that eat giant kelp (or giant kelp holdfasts)—it’s like a five-player system, where the otters eat the crabs that then are not eating the invertebrates, and the invertebrates then can eat the smothering algae off of the eelgrass. And the eelgrass is happy once again.

Kyle Shanebeck: Yeah, I think that’s five. I’m not great at math in my head.

Melissa Petruzzello: Well, I think it’s five, and that’s, that’s a lot! Ecology is really complicated.

Kyle Shanebeck: Yeah, I told you it’s not always that simple. There’s even more players involved, obviously. We like to talk about these systems simply, because it helps us as humans to kind of understand and put things into context. But, obviously, there’s even more organisms that are living in this ecosystem, and it’s never even that simple. This is one of the reasons I think ecology is such a wonderful and exciting field of study, because, yeah, things are just very, very complex, and even no matter how much we know, there’s some things that can always still surprise us.

Melissa Petruzzello: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, as a botanist and a science communicator who works to give overlooked photosynthesizers their proper limelight, I have to begrudgingly acknowledge that an adorable animal that everyone loves is so important to the health of these marine plants and algae (or “algee,” as we can call them). Some animals get all the attention, and it turns out that maybe otters actually deserve it. And, in fact, it gives me hope that maybe the conservation and restoration of these important but lowly organisms, like eelgrass and kelp, could perhaps piggyback on the fame and likeability of otters. From the founder species to the keystone species, and all the fish and invertebrates in between, everyone benefits if the system is kept in balance and restored by humans as much as possible. Kyle, as an ecologist, what message of hope would you like to leave us as a takeaway for these two stories of complex interactions across the tree of life?

Kyle Shanebeck: Well, Melissa, I’m not sure I appreciate your sarcastic tone there, but I will choose to ignore it and graciously accept your humble appreciation of cute megafauna. Joking aside, I obviously love otters. I have ever since I was five years old and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I told my mother I would research them. And—fun fact—here I am, er, years later. Otters teach us a very important lesson, and you brought up a good word we haven’t used yet, but “keystone species” is what otters are because of this disproportionate effect they have on their ecosystem. Protecting a healthy ecosystem is what makes them a keystone species. And it goes to kind of an important lesson that I always used to emphasize. I used to teach fifth- and sixth-grade outdoor education, and one of the main points I always tried to drive home with the kiddos was interconnectivity—that all things are connected, and even small changes can have far-reaching effects that we’re not always aware of. This is a great, of course, example of a large effect, a very strong and obvious effect. But, as scientists, I think we need to abandon some of our ideas of isolation in our disciplines. We like to think, like, “Oh, I’m an ecologist;. I’m not a botanist.” And “Oh, I’m a parasitologist. I’m not a marine biologist.” Um, or “I’m a mammologist; I don’t deal with ecology.” Because these things are actually, of course, all inherently connected. And it’s important to understand other disciplines and the research we’re doing and the things we’re discovering. ’Cause me, I started as a marine biologist—that’s what I really wanted to be—but then I realized, “How cool are parasites?” And, oh my, parasites can have a really strong effect on otters and how they act and then how they interact with the food they eat, and then the food they eat interacts with their environment, and the kelp forest itself. These things are all interconnected; no system is closed. And nature isn’t static; it’s constantly moving and changing. And that’s why I think ecology as a whole is such a fun and dynamic discipline, and I’m really happy to be a part of it. To understand it, we really need to use all the possible tools, which is why it’s good I have a botanist friend, because, even though, I mean, even though plants are not as cool as otters...

Melissa Petruzzello: Hey now!

Kyle Shanebeck:...kelp (large macrocystic algae) and eelgrass are integral, essential, super-important parts of marine ecosystems, and we need to understand them in order to really instruct our conservation efforts. So I hope, as an ecologist, I’m helping people reach across disciplines more. Yeah, that’s my hope.

Melissa Petruzzello: Oh, well, I love that. Well said! Yeah, our interconnectedness in all areas of life, you know, it really can’t be overemphasized. Well, thank you so much for being here, Kyle. This was really fun and so informative. I hope that the listeners learned a bit more about giant kelp and about eelgrass and, of course, about adorable otters. So thank you so much for being here.

Kyle Shanebeck: Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure!

Melissa Petruzzello: Well, for Britannica’s Botanize! podcast series, I’m Melissa Petruzzello and was joined today by Kyle Shanebeck. Thanks so much for listening to episode four, “Otters, Algae, and Plants, Oh My,” which was produced by Kurt Heintz. Until next time, stay curious.

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