Not only are sea otters one of the cutest creatures on the planet, they’re also a keystone species and play a major part in shaping a near shore biome. How do they do it? Well, one of their favorite foods is urchin. You know how much you love ice cream on a hot day or a really satisfying slice of pizza after a workout? Well that’s how sea otters feel about snacking on urchin. You know what urchins just loooove snacking on? Kelp and algae. Yeah. Not my thing either. But It’s their fav. And that’s great. It’s their place in the ecosystem. But we found out that when sea otters are missing, urchins increase in number and eat entire kelp beds. Yep. Urchins inckecked clean house and mow down entire coastlines to the rock bed. Like that friend who won’t go home and ate your last slice of Chicago deep dish pizza. Fish no longer have safe places to hide and seals have to work harder to find their fish meals. But with sea otters around, urchins are kept in check and all the life that needs kelp fields to survive get to keep their home and keep on living. So next time you melt looking at an adorable sea otter, maybe also think about great a job they do keeping an entire biome in balance.
In Japanese Buddhist/Shinto temples/shrines hang geometric puzzles called sangaku. The puzzles were created using Japanese mathematics and ask the viewer to discover the relationships between each geometric figure. Keep an eye out for an upcoming post which includes the full sangaku. For now I’ll give you a hint: it involves the Pythagorean theorem.
Oil & Acrylic on Panel, 2019
