SURVIVAL REVIVALS
ENDANGERED
Sea otter's rally from edge of extinction
Environmentally speaking, our species is not doing well. In the past four decades, half of all the wildlife on earth has vanished; there’s talk of us triggering the planet’s next mass extinction. There is now hope we can turn things around, and good reason to try re-wilding
the earth. Witness the remarkable return of sea otters to the Pacific Northwest, where the luxuriously furred creatures are rebounding in a relative jiffy. From a North American population of 300,000-ish when Captain James Cook started trading pelts on Vancouver Island in 1778, the cuddly mammal that shucks shellfish on its belly was hunted to near-oblivion. By the 1920s, otters were almost completely wiped out from California clear to Alaska and the global population plummeted to fewer than 2,000. Hopeful biologists reintroduced small numbers of otter in the late ‘60s, and with legislation to stop hunting and the coastal environment still relatively pristine, the new couples proliferated quickly. At last check, British Columbia populations had rebounded to 5,000; in Alaska, 12,000—and rapidly counting. But there’s more, thanks to the sea otter’s linchpin role. Saving the otter triggered
a chain reaction. Otters eat sea urchins, urchins eat kelp, and kelp is the basis of a finely balanced ecosystem. The wild West Coast as we know it isn’t how it’s supposed to look—it’s an urchin barren, a dead zone where unchecked urchin populations have clearcut the kelp forests. Bringing back the otter puts the urchin back in its place. The kelp returns along
with all the fish, animals and birds right on up the food chain to soaring bald eagles. By fixing our otter mistake, we’re gradually flipping the on switch for a complete near-shore ecosystem. Bonus: we’re also making a friendlier environment for ourselves. Because as any open coast paddler knows, kelp helps dampen the waves. —Tim Shuff
FORGOTTON
The kayak is our sport’s greatest survival story
Before there was land, there was water. Before there were
creatures that walked, they paddled about. Before the wheel, there was the boat. For those of us born pre-digital, there is deep comfort in a basic tool that is fundamentally unchanged from something in Grandpa’s shed, or his great- grandpa’s distant memory. When the first restless, striving Europeans brought the wonders of the modern
world to indigenous peoples, our neighbors in the North already had this marvelous craft called a kayak. Born of a watery planet and an elemental need to move, it’s an idea as old as fire and wood, sinew and skin. The aquatic equivalent of walking, perfectly calibrated to the speed of thought. Like popcorn and chocolate, potatoes and peanuts, the first peoples gave us this
happy invention. It takes us to dream places, relaxes us from the world our anxious genius has wrought, and cradles us like Moses when that world fails. The kayak has floated since time immemorial. Then, suddenly, it declined when
its inventors and their traditional way of life were decimated. Remembered and cherished by a few, and later embraced by recreationists, it’s now been on the upswing for half a century. Consuming nothing to operate, depreciating slower than inflation boosts its resale, kayaks are practically free to paddle and own. As long as there are people and water, the kayak will thrive. And in our most utopian dreams, the kayak will dominate. —TS
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PHOTO: VIRGINIA MARSHALL PHOTO: JORDAN MANLEY
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