Frozen bay turns otters into easy prey
An extra-cold winter on the Alaska Peninsula has frozen sea otters out of the bay and pushed them onto the tundra near Port Heiden where they’re easy prey for wolves, humans and hunger.
The sea otters are probably on land looking for water where they might find food, said Douglas Burn, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska sea otter program. They usually scour sea bottoms for clams or sea urchins, but the ice froze them out.
Similar die-offs have been documented before, but biologists are worried and keeping an eye on the situation, he said.
Western Alaska sea otters from the Aleutian Islands to Cook Inlet are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They number 48,000, a drop of more than 50 percent in the last 20 years, the agency estimates.
Damn ‘Global Warming’ is killing them off! Curse you mankind for harming such poor helpless, and cute, creatures!