Beyond species-specific considerations, any reintroduction effort must consider ecosystem-level implications. Sea otters can greatly affect the environment they live in. As sea otters have been reintroduced or naturally recovered in other coastal areas of North America, they have substantially disturbed the structure and dynamics of nearshore food webs. Some of these effects are perceived as beneficial to people, and others are perceived as negative. 

 The influence of sea otters on coastal ecosystems is one of the most well-known and well-documented examples of a trophic cascade (the complex network of consumer-prey interactions, from apex predators at the top of the food web to plants at the bottom). The top-down effects of sea otters on coastal ecosystems result mostly from the direct limiting influences of sea otters on their macroinvertebrate prey and through the indirect knock-on effects on other species and ecological processes.