AR-News: (UK) Alaska Sea Otters' Disappearance a Mystery

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Mon 9 February, 2004 02:09 

By Yereth Rosen 
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (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.



full story:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=4310296&se
ction=news 



"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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