Name: 阿拉斯加東南部海獺 (Southeast Alaska Sea Otters)
Uploaded: 2025-08-12T16:37:01.000Z
Duration: 6 min 20 s

We've been working on a sea otter project looking at the conflict between commercial fisheries and sea otters.

我們一直在開展一個海獺項目，研究商業捕魚與海獺之間的衝突。

In southern and southeast Alaska we're seeing increases in the sea otter population, actually fairly significant increases.

在阿拉斯加南部和東南部，我們看到海獺的數量在增加，而且增幅相當大。

So this is a growing population both in distribution and abundance.

是以，無論是在分佈上還是在數量上，這個種群都在不斷壯大。

The issue was sort of brewing in my mind for a couple of years before Zach approached me about trying to tackle it from a research end.

這個問題在我腦海中醞釀了幾年，後來扎克找到我，希望我從研究的角度來解決這個問題。

Primarily that was because Dungeness crabbers were coming and either talking to me or I listened to them testifying at a Shellfish Board of Fish meeting.

這主要是因為鄧傑內斯蟹的養殖者來找我談話，或者我聽他們在貝類魚類委員會會議上作證。

Their concerns both for their bottom line but I think also for the resource because once they've seen otters in a bay for several years or even just one or two years they won't fish there anymore because they're not catching any crab there anymore.

他們既擔心自己的底線，但我認為也擔心資源，因為一旦他們在一個海灣看到水獺好幾年，甚至只是一兩年，他們就不會再在那裡捕魚了，因為他們在那裡再也捕不到任何螃蟹。

They're worried that they're going to lose their income and they're also worried that because they're being forced into these smaller areas they're going to overly deplete that resource.

他們擔心會失去收入，也擔心因為被迫進入這些較小的區域，會過度消耗資源。

Right now sea otters are competing directly for the California sea cucumbers which are commercially harvested by divers as well as geoduck clams and red sea urchins and the Dungeness crab fishery.

目前，海獺正在與潛水員商業捕撈的加州海参、象拔蚌、紅海膽和鄧傑內斯蟹漁業直接競爭。

Sea otters were extirpated by the commercial fur trade probably about the late 1800s and by 1911 when the International Fur Seal Treaty was put in place sea otters were non-existent in southeast Alaska.

大約在 19 世紀末，商業毛皮貿易導致海獺滅絕，到 1911 年《國際海豹條約》生效時，阿拉斯加東南部已不存在海獺。

Otters were reintroduced in the late 60s, a little over 400 otters were translocated, the populations were really insignificant as it related to competition with commercial fisheries for probably 20 plus years but as these populations of otters got established they got to the point where they could kind of grow rapidly in the way of numbers and at the same time commercial fisheries were being developed.

水獺是在上世紀 60 年代末被重新引進的，當時有 400 多隻水獺被轉移到其他地方，在與商業漁業競爭的 20 多年裡，水獺的數量一直微不足道，但隨著這些水獺種群的建立，它們的數量得以迅速增長，同時商業漁業也得到了發展。

We really started seeing the conflict between otters and fishermen probably in the early 90s.

我們真正開始看到水獺和漁民之間的衝突大概是在 90 年代初。

At that point the otter population was at a level that it was impacting commercial fisheries and so since that time we've seen the otter population continue to grow as well as the participation and value of some of these commercial fisheries grow.

從那時起，我們看到水獺數量持續增長，一些商業漁業的參與度和價值也在增長。

We've seen several areas which have been closed to commercial fishing and once those areas have been depleted of a couple of these resources they've remained closed.

我們看到有幾個地區已經禁止商業捕魚，一旦這些地區的一些資源枯竭，它們就會一直關閉。

Sea otters are kind of at the top of their food chain and they're voracious predators.

海獺處於食物鏈的頂端，是貪婪的捕食者。

Because of that voracious appetite they have the ability to kind of consume a lot in an area so the classic paradigm is that where otters move in they remove herbivores from the ecosystem and that allows kelps to reestablish themselves and some of these large canopy kelps such as Macrocystis those are important and very productive habitats especially for early life histories of fish.

由於它們貪婪的食慾，它們有能力在一個區域內消耗掉很多東西，所以經典的範例是，水獺遷入的地方會從生態系統中移除食草動物，這使得海帶能夠重新建立起來，其中一些大型的冠層海帶，如巨囊藻，是非常重要和富饒的棲息地，尤其是對魚類的早期生活史來說。

We're kind of seeing in areas where otters are moving in they're changing those ecosystems currently here.

我們看到，在水獺遷入的地區，它們正在改變這裡的生態系統。

Areas that are going from a monoculture sort of urchin barrens for instance kind of changing into a more diverse ecosystem and that's great when we talk about ecosystems but when we talk about commercial fisheries that's not a good thing.

例如，從海膽荒地等單一養殖區域轉變為更加多樣化的生態系統，當我們談論生態系統時，這是件好事，但當我們談論商業漁業時，這就不是一件好事了。

That is precluding some of the existing fisheries from moving forward in southeast Alaska.

這阻礙了阿拉斯加東南部一些現有漁業的發展。

These populations of otters they haven't been followed well since they were reestablished so the first thing we needed to do was just know how many otters were here and once we established that ongoing with those efforts to survey the otters we also felt it was very important to look at the diet of sea otters.

這些水獺種群自重建以來一直沒有得到很好的跟蹤，是以我們需要做的第一件事就是知道這裡有多少隻水獺。

What proportion of their diet is these commercially important species?

這些具有重要商業價值的物種在它們的食物中佔多大比例？

We're using high powered telescopes to observe otters.

我們正在使用高倍望遠鏡觀察水獺。

Lucky for us otters bring everything they eat to the surface.

我們很幸運，水獺會把它們吃的東西都帶到水面上來。

We're also recording the dive times and how many calories per unit effort an otter is consuming.

我們還記錄了水獺的潛水時間和組織、部門努力消耗的熱量。

Commercially important species are some of the most calorically rich and preferred prey of sea otters.

具有商業價值的物種是一些熱量最豐富的物種，也是海獺的首選獵物。

The third sort of aspect of this research is to look at otters movement at the edge of the range.

這項研究的第三個方面是考察水獺在牧場邊緣的活動情況。

We've established that otters are impacting these commercial fisheries and so one of the things we wanted to do is look at otters and how otters were distributed and how their dispersal was from the sort of edge of the range areas and as otters move into new areas, areas they haven't been existing or established populations in yet, we were interested in what's going to happen here in the next year or two.

我們已經確定，水獺對這些商業漁業造成了影響，是以我們想做的一件事就是觀察水獺和水獺的分佈情況，以及水獺是如何從邊緣地區擴散的，隨著水獺進入新的地區，即它們尚未存在或建立種群的地區，我們對未來一兩年這裡會發生什麼很感興趣。

So we've instrumented 30 otters in this area with VHF transmitters and we're following those otters as they disperse from where we caught them and the next step of the research is collecting foraging data from those animals.

是以，我們在這一地區用甚高頻發射器為 30 只水獺安裝了儀器，我們正在跟蹤這些水獺從我們捕捉到它們的地方分散開來，下一步的研究是收集這些動物的覓食數據。

現在，我們正在薩吉諾灣工作。

This bay has been inhabited by sea otters probably for I would say about seven or eight years now and there's no longer a commercial dungeness fishery in Saginaw Bay.

海獺棲息在這個海灣裡大概有七八年了，薩吉諾灣已經不再有商業性的鄧傑內斯漁業。

And today we probably saw 100 to 125 otters in the bay.

今天，我們大概在海灣裡看到了 100 到 125 只水獺。

It looks like from some work we've done previously they're mostly eating several species of clams and smaller crabs.

從我們之前做的一些工作來看，它們主要吃幾種蛤蜊和較小的螃蟹。

We may be able to make some kind of a prediction for a commercial fisherman that says this is what you can guess is going to happen in the next 5, 10, 15 years in your fishery as we see this otter population change.

我們也許可以為商業漁民做出某種預測，說當我們看到水獺數量發生變化時，你可以猜測未來 5 年、10 年、15 年你的漁場會發生什麼。

The project itself is not going to be providing answers or recommendations for what to do but we'll be providing information that will help decision makers, policy makers, community members, commercial fishermen make decisions about what to do in response, if anything.

該項目本身並不提供答案或建議，但我們將提供資訊，幫助決策者、政策制定者、社區成員、商業漁民就如何應對做出決定。