"But there's nothing we can do about changes in shark distribution or shark behavior. It's natural."
Yet we are constantly told that we can wipe them out without even trying, and how fragile the whole system is...
Due to global warming no doubt. Anything bad is due to global warming.
I’m sure it’s not deliberate. The sharks are probably just mistaking the otters for surfers.
The otters ought to starting wearing liberal democrat costumes. Then the sharks would leave them alone out of professional curtesy.
Otters are playful animals and until recently it was mostly male otters getting bitten by the sharks. Probably what we have here is some kind of initiation ritual for otter gangs--the new member has to taunt a shark as part of the ritual...and sometimes they get killed doing so.
Why there are more female otters being bitten recently is harder to explain, but they should not rule out the possibility that these are lesbian otters who are imitating male behavior.
What? Some wild animals kill and eat others? But ... they told me at school that Nature is Good!
Until the abalone population returns, we have too many otters.
Let the sharks feast.
“One major change: the abundance of elephant seals.”
There you go. I also assume these are a protected species thus leading to ballooning in numbers and drawing in more predators for a quick meal.
A moose bit my sister once.
It’s that damned Navy sonar hypnotizing the sharks!
sarc
Gee, here’s a dumb thought,...try KILLING the sharks!!!!!
I’m still not sure what the elephant seals have to do with anything. Ok, there are more of them. How does that relate to the story about otters? Seems like the sharks could be feasting on elephant seals and leave the otters alone.
Who writes this garbage, anyway?
Julie Packard is exercising the communist philosophy of ‘perfect knowledge’ in the central planning and control of the ‘sanctuary’ which used to be California state waters owned by the citizens of this state.
In her ‘perfect knowledge’ if she controls one aspect of the ‘system’, e.g. fishing, then she will have a ‘perfect’ system in her own mind.
She’s an idiot to believe she understands or can control all the inputs and the outputs of her self created system.
Under her control, we have seen the death of the Italian and Portuguese human cultures in the vicinity of her system, an unhealthy for humans and animals overpopulation of sea lions in her system and now the sea otters, which the aquarium uses to propagandize their communist views to everyone, are being killed by sharks, which they had used to propagandize their communist views previously.
Poor Julie, it takes a lot of work to have ‘perfect knowledge’ and command and control central planning. She’s falling off her game!
In the 1970s and 80s there was a huge environmental push to bring back the sea otters. Since sea otters are greatly affected by oil spills, anti-oil environmentalists incorporated otter restoration as part of their PR effort against offshore oil drilling. Huge sums were spent to bring the cute little abalone-crunchers back to California waters.
This is anecdotal but as the numbers of sea otters increased I noticed that the number of shark attacks on humans did too. This is logical since sharks follow their sea otter prey and more sharks equal more attacks on humans.
Now the ultra-liberal Mercury News frets that nothing can be done about sharks devouring their favorite food. As Pogo famously said: "I have met the enemy and he is us."
