We have an unfortunate laboratory here. Still, Jarman suspects that the military pollution has not been the driving force behind the otter and sea lion problems, since the population crash has been documented even on islands with no PCBs. But, from the very beginning in the Aleutians, we've been wrong a lot. The Aleutians are so unpredictable that scientists may never be able to unravel all the biological interactions and prove or disprove their theories about how the food web got tangled. But it's an unbelievably complicated place, and biology is not a very clean science.
Animals are like people.
There is never one factor at play. . . . Sometimes you poke along and poke along and all of a sudden, the pieces fall into place. Some experts say the ocean may be shifting back, favoring the marine mammals again instead of the sharks and pollock. If it does, Estes and his team will be there to chronicle it. Like marble chips in a kaleidoscope, they would fall in different patterns.