{"id":29806,"date":"2015-10-14T17:57:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T00:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/scientists-ask-for-public-help-with-sick-otters\/"},"modified":"2015-10-14T17:57:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T00:57:55","slug":"scientists-ask-for-public-help-with-sick-otters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/scientists-ask-for-public-help-with-sick-otters\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists ask for public help with sick otters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>HOMER \u2014 <\/strong>Scientists are turning to the public for help dealing with sick and dead otters in Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they have recently received about 200 reports of sick or dead sea otters in the Kachemak Bay region, reported KBBI-AM.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re finding otters all over the Homer area,\u201d said Marc Webber of Homer. \u201cThey\u2019re found from outer Bishop\u2019s Beach all the way around the spit on both sides and around the shores of Mud Bay, so pretty wide spread.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Webber, Deputy Refuge Manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, and a group of trained volunteers try to keep people away from sick otters and get a veterinarian to euthanize the animals if necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the otters are turning with neurological conditions that cause them to twitch, said Webber.<\/p>\n<p>The Fish and Wildlife Service is working with Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward and running tests to find out what\u2019s hurting the animals. They expect results in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>They dying otters could be an indicator that something is wrong with the entire ecosystem, according to Webber.<\/p>\n<p>The Alaska Sea Life Center has been tracking a streptococcus illness in Kachemak Bay otters for a while now, but what\u2019s happened since August is something new, said veterinarian Cari Goertz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis summer started off fairly typical with &#8230; a few otter carcasses being found every week,\u201d Goertz said. \u201cHowever, as the summer went on into August and September we were getting over 20 carcasses or moribund animals each week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd it\u2019s in those animals that we\u2019ve seen different presentations,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Goertz said she\u2019s been noticing more animals that had been generally healthy but died suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomething is hitting them harder and faster, in addition to the disease that we\u2019re familiar with seeing, something else seems to be involved,\u201d Webber said. \u201cThat\u2019s just speculation, we don\u2019t have any evidence yet, but that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HOMER \u2014 Scientists are turning to the public for help dealing with sick and dead otters in Alaska. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they have recently received about 200 reports of sick or dead sea otters in the Kachemak Bay region, reported KBBI-AM. \u201cWe\u2019re finding otters all over the Homer area,\u201d said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29806"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}