Otter, Kelp, Man, Whale, Anemone, Global Warming

Okay, so here's something I heard on National Public Radio this morning, which is something, on some level, I'd like to believe because it means we could do something which feels good to save the planet.

This is the flip side of Upton Sinclair's observation it is difficult to bring a man to understanding, if his income depends upon his not understanding--i.e., people who have an investment in technologies or practices which ruin the planet for the rest of us but which make money for them, do not want to believe they are ruining the planet.

So, here's the story. Stay with me.

You have these kelp forests in the ocean. They soak up carbon dioxide like huge sponges--you remember carbon dioxide (CO2), the stuff we all exhale, which causes global warming when there's too much of it.  So kelp chews up CO2 bigtime. So we like kelp. 
But there are these animals called sea anemones which eat their way through vasts underwater sea kelp forests and strip them bare. 
So we do not like sea anemones.
Enter the otter. Adorable fellow. Floats on his back, plays and frolics. We like sea otters, just because they are cute. But wait, there's more. Turns out sea otters eat those nasty sea anemones, really clean them out. 
No sea anemones, and the kelp forests thrive and global CO2 plummets and everyone is happy. (Except the sea anemones. There always has to be a loser, it seems.)
But, now here's where man comes in, as usual, playing the role of disruptor and destroyer of cute mammals.

No, men do not hunt sea otters, much.
What men hunt is baleen whales. Almost to extinction.
And baleen whales are the main dietary preference for killer whales.
So without the baleen whales, the killer whales eat sea otter. Reduce their numbers from hundreds of thousands to just a few thousand and the sea anemones have no predator and their population explodes and good bye kelp forests, hello skyrocketing global CO2.

Of course, in biology, nothing is quite so straightforward. Before the killer whales went after sea otters, which, after all are just little nibblets to a killer whale, they ate their way through harbor seals, gray seals, all sorts of seals.  But the lesson of this NPR piece was if man hadn't messed with the balance, there'd be plenty of baleen whales for the killer whales to eat and seals and sea otters and kelp forests and global CO2 levels would all be happily in balance.

You know there's more to this story--what about all those automobiles pumping out CO2 burning fossil fuels and what about all those farms with all those cows lined up in vast feeding pens emitting methane and requiring vast expenditures in fossil fuels to grow the corn to feed them?

But I like the story that says more sea otters, who are very cute. They come in to Hampton salt marshes to have their pups and if you think Labrador pups are cute, what 'til you see sea otter pups. 

I don't know who killed the baleen whales. Probably the Japanese, who we've had problems with before. 

But even the Norwegians, who we tend to want to like kill whales.

Nothing is ever simple.

Except sea otters are really cute.