Do youknow how many calories there are in that sea lion you just ate?

[pscot]

This story, and others like it, are found in William Stolzenbergs book, Where the Wild Things Were. It's worth reading.

http://seagrant.uaf.edu/news/05ASJ/02.18.05killer-appetites.html

Researcher Terrie Williams believes understanding what caused the crash of Steller sea lions and sea otters in Alaska's Aleutian Islands boils down to how many calories a 5,000-pound killer whale needs to stay fat and happy.
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In a study published in late 2004 in the journal Ecology, Williams, a University of California marine mammal physiologist, calculated the metabolic needs of killer whales as well as the energy contained within sea lions and sea otters, two prey species whose populations in the Aleutians have plummeted over the last 30 years. Scientists continue to debate the cause of the declines. Most theories center around an ecosystem-wide shift that resulted in less food for marine mammals, seabirds and other sea life.
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Perhaps not surprising, a killer whale needs a lot of food. Williams says an average adult female killer whale that eats marine mammals needs to consume about 164,000 calories each day. An average male will burn through 243,000 calories in a single day.

Traditionally, killer whales got those needed calories by hunting and killing large whales and whale calves. One theory holds that killer whales learned to hunt sea lions after American, Russian and European whalers decimated North Pacific whale stocks in the 19th and 20th Centuries. And when sea lion numbers crashed, killer whales went to the next item on the menu, sea otters.

WILLIAMS: "The interesting thing is that you almost can watch the history of the marine mammal declines in the Aleutian Island chain, and see killer whales eat down the food chain, from really large things that had lots of fat and protein, to progressively smaller prey items, and then finally to a sea otter."

To see if a steady diet of sea lions and sea otters could actually sustain killer whales, Williams totaled up the calories found in these prey species. No animals were killed for the study. Instead, Williams used carcasses from animals found dead in the wild. Williams found that a typical male sea otter provided almost 62,000 calories when eaten whole, while a female sea otter yielded about 42,000 calories. While not bulging with energy, Williams says sea otters are not the junk food many people think.

WILLIAMS: "In actual fact when we did the experiment and we took a whole sea otter carcass and ground it up, hair and all, it actually was not as poor a nutritional item as we thought it would be. There was a high amount of protein. It's not very fatty, so as a result, killer whales would have to eat more sea otters." On the other hand, Steller sea lion pups were substantially more nutritious, offering 40 percent more calories per pound than sea otters.

----- just how many killer whales would it take to decimate their populations? Adding up all the numbers, Williams says if an individual killer whale fed exclusively on sea lions or sea otters, it would need to eat as many as 2,500 sea otters, or 840 sea lion pups, or 160 adult sea lions, every year, just to stay healthy. Extending these numbers across the Aleutian Islands, as few as 40 killer whales could have caused sea lion populations to crash. Even more startling: as few as five killer whales could account for the loss of tens of thousands of sea otters over the past decade, and the continued low numbers of sea lions.
(more)

[BlooInBloo]

1. Correction: That's *me* at a breakfast buffet.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. OK, I guess I'll make it a New Years resolution.

Cut back on sea lion pups.

[pscot]

4. If you burned a quarter of a million calories a day

you wouldn't need to. Gotta spend more time in the pool.

[LiberalEsto]

3. How many calories are people?

I wonder if anyone has ever researched that question.

[pscot]

5. Depends. Are we talking Rush Limpballs

or Dennis Kucinich? Pound for pound I'd guess a bit less than a sea otter.

[LiberalEsto]

6. All that lard on Limpy is toxic

Heaven only knows what nasty substances lurk in his plentiful fat cells. So even though he's potentially carrying a whaleful of calories, he's an uh-uh yucky.

As for Dennis, sea otter seems about right.

[GliderGuider]

10. I just did the calculations: we're about 150,000 calories each.

It depends on the ratio of proteins and fat, and of course the starting body weight.

To a first approximation, the "average" human body is around 20% protein and 20% fat. So a 150 lb person would contain about 50,000 calories from protein and about 100,000 calories from fat.

This of course assumes that the subject is completely consumed, including the brain and internal organs. Since we need about 2,500 calories a day to live, you could survive on, say, George over there for about two months. Provided the refrigerator is working, of course.

Have a tasty day...

[pscot]

11. So the "average" Orca

would require approximately 1.33 persons per day. The J-pod, which hangs out in north Puget Sound has about 70 members. Thus the population of Seattle could sustain them for over 100 years. Obviously it is not practical to look to killer whales to solve our population problem. Nuts!

[LiberalEsto]

12. Oh yum!

:9
And on Day 3, George hash.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Is that all?

I'll have pudding, then.

[pscot]

8. Would you care for a mint?

:P

[Dead_Parrot]

9. ffk ff. 'm ffll. nt