conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Sea Otter Conservation about Conservation, Pacific, Shawn with the genre: Science & Math, Biological Sciences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dr. Shawn the author 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. the author has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and abstracts on the biology and ecology of marine animals. Dr. the author 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.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Shawn the author 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. the author has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and abstracts on the biology and ecology of marine animals. Dr. the author 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.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sea Otter Conservation
  Since 1984, personnel within the Sea Otter Research and Conservation program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium have wrestled with the ethical and practical aspects of managing live-stranded sea otters. During that time, the practice of rescuing, treating, and releasing live-stranded sea otters has evolved into a sophisticated research and conservation endeavor. Unlike early efforts that sought to keep stranded sea otters alive and place them into permanent zoo or aquarium homes, recent trends have focused on conducting research with live-stranded otters, contributing to a broad range of sea otter conservation projects, and releasing healthy, capable sea otters into the wild population. New techniques for rearing live-stranded sea otter pups using non-releasable adult females as surrogate mothers have shown significant promise and have helped the program identify new ways to support sea otter conservation efforts. Operating a live-stranding program has allowed program personnel to continue advancing sea otter care and husbandry techniques. This chapter addresses the context for determining the value of rescuing, treating, and releasing sea otters, and offers guidance to other wildlife care and rehabilitation programs that aspire toward responsible, meaningful wildlife-care practices.
  When a sea otter strands alive along the shore, what obligation do humans have to care for it? Should we treat ill or injured sea otters and release them or remove them from the population? What can we learn from live-stranded sea otters that will support the conservation of the species? Should we use live-stranded sea otters as research subjects before releasing them to the wild? How should we balance the cost of caring for individual sea otters and the value of other conservation outcomes (e.g., preserving nearshore marine habitat)? When should we euthanize live-stranded sea otters? These questions have guided the development of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's (MBA) response to live-stranded sea otters over the past decade, and they represent the kind of inquiry that wildlife rescue programs should undertake to generate programmatic and conservation value.
  In the early days of the MBA's rescue and care program for sea otters, animal care personnel aided orphaned, injured, or ill sea otters from all age classes and targeted release for most cases. The program included lofty ambitions for undertaking scientific research and developing better care techniques; however, the labor intensity of managing an increasing load of live-stranded neonates and debilitated adult otters hindered progress in this area. In addition, caregivers had to take sea otter pups for time-consuming swims in Monterey Bay as a means of stimulating their fitness, helping them acquire swimming and diving skills, and developing their foraging abilities. Although this swim program accomplished the intended objectives, the pups bonded with, and remained acclimated to, the swimmers and never established a natural wariness of people.
  Program managers have long believed that treating stranded, prime-age (i.e., reproductive) female sea otters and releasing them provided some value to the California population, but that treating stranded otters with geriatric problems or irresolvable health issues did not make good sense, since, in most cases, those otters could no longer reproduce and tended to fall ill within a short time after release. Of the more than 600 southern sea otters received by the MBA from 1984 through 2013, about 30% died, veterinary personnel euthanized about 40% for various reasons, animal care personnel released about one third, and program managers transferred a small percentage of healthy but non-releasable animals to accredited aquariums and zoos in the United States (MBA, unpublished data). Many subadult and adult otters did not receive radio tags upon release, so the program generated little data on the long-term survival and reproduction of these animals. Almost all otters that stranded as pups did receive radio tags; however, until 2001, most of these animals did not survive long in the wild—many died or vanished within a short time, and caregivers had to recapture many others because they failed to thrive or engaged in undesirable behavior (e.g., interacting with humans). Finally, few of them entered the reproductive population.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the meantime, USFWS proposed to list the California sea otter, which it identified by the common name "southern sea otter" to distinguish it from the northern sea otter in Alaska, as an endangered species under the ESA (40 FR 44329, September 26, 1975). The interested public viewed the proposal favorably, but the state opposed listing the southern sea otter as either endangered or threatened, arguing that it did not meet any of the listing criteria, that the population was at an optimum level, that continued range expansion was likely, and that no major natural or human-caused threats to the population as a whole existed. The Friends of the Sea Otter argued extensively in support of the "endangered" listing. In accordance with the MMC's recommendation, USFWS ultimately listed the southern sea otter as threatened on the basis of its small population size, its severely reduced range, and the potential risk posed by oil spills (42 FR 2965, January 14, 1977). USFWS convened a recovery team for the species in 1980 and approved a recovery plan in 1982. In light of the pace of offshore oil development, the difficulty of containing an oil spill on the open ocean, and the difficulty of preventing sea otters from entering an area in the path of a spill, the recovery team concluded that translocation was the "most effective and reasonable management action" (USFWS, 1982).
  The management concept that fishermen had proposed during the 1963 hearing and that CDFG had subsequently embraced gained additional legitimacy, this time at the federal level, through the advocacy of the MMC. In a 1980 letter, the MMC urged USFWS not only to "establish at least one additional group of sea otters at a site that is secure from oil spills" as soon as possible but to "recognize the ultimate need for 'zonal management' of the California sea otter." This management scheme, it noted, "would be based upon a determination that the [MMPA's] goal of optimum sustainable population can and should be achieved with reference to the 'health and stability of the marine ecosystem' and that historic levels and distribution are not necessary to satisfy that goal." The MMC envisioned the designation of numerous zones where sea otters would either be protected or excluded, the reasons for which might include that "conflicts between otters and fisheries would be substantial" (Twiss, 1980). How these zones might practically be maintained remained, as always, an outstanding question. The MMC pointed out that sites could be chosen that were "naturally self-limiting" because of adjacent unsuitable habitat but noted that zonal management would "almost certainly require the development and utilization of effective techniques" to keep sea otters within or out of zones (Twiss, 1980). Despite the MMC's urgings, the USFWS recovery plan, although recognizing the potential for conflict between an expanding sea otter population and shellfish fisheries, mentioned the possibility of "some level of zonal management" only once, as a potential ultimate strategy in the long-term context of managing the southern sea otter to obtain and maintain its "optimum sustainable population" size; it did not suggest the containment of any translocated population (USFWS, 1982).
  The MMC, however, continued to press for zonal management, seeing it as a way to address the incompatibility of certain human activities in the marine environment with sea otters. One such activity was commercial gill and trammel net fishing, which was rumored for several years to be drowning sea otters before the first direct observation occurred in 1982. An average estimated 80 sea otters per year were killed in nets from 1982 to 1984, prompting CDFG to institute successive depth and area closures within the sea otter's range (Wendell et al., 1986; MMC, 1988). In 1984, amidst calls for action to address the sea otter drownings, USFWS announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the translocation of southern sea otters. The notice identified a proposed action—translocation to San Nicolas Island—and several possible alternatives. Translocation in conjunction with restriction of the existing population had "substantial" support from fishing groups concerned about the impacts of range expansion, the notice acknowledged, but "would be very controversial because of strong opposition to it by other interested members of the public" and would require "significant amendments" to the ESA and MMPA (49 FR 26313, June 27, 1984).
  The scoping sessions that followed demonstrated the resolve of the fishermen not to allow a translocation to go forward without significant concessions (such as restriction of the parent population in conjunction with any translocation) and the willingness of the environmental groups, unnerved by the potential of a catastrophic oil spill to decimate the sea otter population, to yield to concessions (such as containment of the translocated population) (USFWS, 1984a). Whereas the environmental groups and their supporters continued to foreground the value of the sea otter as a "keystone species" for its positive effect on kelp abundance and associated biodiversity, the fishermen reframed their earlier rhetorical emphasis on a balance of uses. They now represented themselves as defending the MMPA's goal of promoting the "health and stability of the marine ecosystem" and characterized the proposed translocation as emotionally driven, unbalanced, single-species management (USFWS, 1984a). The Western Oil and Gas Association, intimately involved in the planning process for the translocation program and powerful enough to ignore rhetorical niceties, was determined to ensure that no additional restrictions on oil and gas activities would be put in place because of sea otters (USFWS, 1984b); unlike the fishermen, it had the means to secure legal counsel to remedy the impediments the ESA and MMPA presented to zonal management.
  The program's unworkability stemmed from the fact that sea otters were biological organisms with a strong homing impulse and interests of their own. As Myers had warned at the 1963 hearing, they could not necessarily be moved and expected to stay where they were put. Despite the belief of USFWS and others that San Nicolas Island would be a site that was largely "self-limiting" due to the deep ocean channels that surrounded it, most of the 140 sea otters that were brought to San Nicolas Island from 1987 to 1991 left immediately or simply disappeared. Many entered the management zone, from which they were required to be removed, however impractical or contrary to sea otter recovery such removals turned out to be. In 1993, USFWS suspended sea otter captures in the management zone, citing the need to reevaluate its methods in light of sea otter deaths that had apparently resulted from capture and removal.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Application of sea otter translocation as a tool for population restoration was first proposed by Eyerdam (1933). The sea otter translocation projects from the 1950s until the early 1990s, intended for restoration of populations on regional scales, have been the most effective active management programs for the benefit of sea otters in US history (Chapters 3 and ). At present more than 90% of the sea otters alive along the North American coast east and south of PWS exist in populations restored from regional extinction by translocation of animals from other populations.121 I suggest that the most effective US federal legislative actions have been the implementations of MMPA, ESA, and ANILCA. A notable strength of both MMPA and ESA, contrasting with many prior laws, treaties, and protocols, is their applicability to US territorial as well as international marine waters. Large-scale government landholdings or sanctuaries that either encompass the waters and benthic habitats used by sea otters, or include extensive coastline segments adjacent to sea otter habitats, are likely to be valuable to sea otter conservation. One might plausibly argue that by virtue of the exemption of Alaskan Natives from prohibitions of marine mammal harvests, MMPA is flawed in a wildlife protection context despite the obvious conservation and cultural restoration benefits of the law.
  The value of MPAs for sea otter conservation remains a compelling but unresolved issue. With intensifying conservation crises such as global climatic trends and ocean acidification that appear intractable given current technologies and divided cultural perceptions, effective direct actions for the benefit of sea otter habitat conservation may become increasingly elusive. MPAs have proliferated rapidly in recent decades within the geographic range of sea otters. Such areas span a range of scales in terms of size, spatial configuration, and dispersion, and represent a broad range of management objectives and protocols for permitted activities. MPA units represented herein as relevant to sea otter conservation number in the hundreds and incorporate large areas of habitat and adjacent shoreline length. However, the effects of MPA system attributes such as number, size, configuration, dispersion, management goals, and protocols on efficacy of sea otter protection remain unknown. It is suggested that implementation of MPAs for the benefit of sea otters holds genuine potential as a successful conservation strategy, but that the effectiveness of such approaches will require rigorous quantitative analyses and modeling of existing and proposed MPA arrays, in addition to empirical studies of existing MPA systems, to characterize their value in sea otter conservation.
  Financial support during preparation of this chapter was provided by the Ecosystems Branch of the US Geological Survey, and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington. J.L. Bodkin, D.M. Burn, A.M. Johnson, S.E. Larson, S.G. Lio, and K.K. VanBlaricom provided comments on earlier versions of the chapter manuscript.