AR-News: (AK) Alaska sea otters' disappearance a mystery

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

By Yereth Rosen 
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 4 (Reuters) - When Russian explorers first saw sea 
otters bobbing in the waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands in the mid-18th 
century, they knew they had discovered a money maker. 
The otters' fur "is so far superior in length, beauty, blackness and gloss of 
hair to the river otters' pelts that these can scarcely be compared to it," 
wrote German naturalist Georg Steller, who accompanied legendary mariner Vitus 
Bering on his Alaska expeditions. 
Russian and American hunters later wiped out nearly all of Alaska's sea 
otters, whose luxurious fur became known as "soft gold." The otters were saved from 
extinction after a 1911 treaty banned the commercial hunt. 
But sea otters are once again vanishing from Alaska's 1,000-mile (1,600-km) 
Aleutian chain and other parts of southwestern Alaska. This time, there is no 
obvious explanation.


full story:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27447906.htm 
 
"The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing.",
Albert Einstein

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