Twice a month, community scientists in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties -- all trained volunteers -- head out to Elkhorn Slough, a 7-mile arm of Monterey Bay to observe sea otters.
WATSONVILLE -- Twice a month, community scientists in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties -- all trained volunteers -- head out toArmed with binoculars, scopes, notebooks and iPads, they arrive and set up at more than a dozen locations along the banks of the slough.
Thanks to the newly established colony, another species -- one that has decreased tremendously that also helps to fight climate change -- is once again thriving. It's a type of seagrass called eelgrass. It usually grows in shallow water. The tips of the grass are often visible as the otters rest on them.
The otters ate a lot of crab. Because there are now fewer crabs in the estuary, the number of a special kind of slug called a sea hare has exploded. These sea slugs eat a lot of the excess algae film and crud found on dying eelgrass, scrubbing it clean and exposing more of it to sunlight.a study in a prestigious journal known as PNAS or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Seagrass is one marine ecosystem that acts like a carbon sink, and that helps to fight climate change. "Seagrass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And it stores it in its root base and its root base is buried in the marsh. So that's a powerful form of carbon sequestration," said Carswell. As for the community scientists and scientists hoping to catch an eyeful of otters, they are hoping to record data that concerns the otters' social interactions. That data will help inform scientific research.
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