Colonial Sea Birds Feeling the Heat

Warmer oceans=fewer fish=starving birds. This is a report from Alaska, where it’s been a bad year for North Pacific pelagics.

Nine years ago when I was Iceland, we went to a famed Atlantic Puffin nesting site. But it had been abandoned since the last time this tour group was there. Some locals we ran into said there just weren’t any fish offshore anymore.

I took the photo above on the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast of the UK, in 2015. Censuses on the islands mark 2003 as the peak year of breeding Puffins (55,674). In 2018 there were 43,956 pairs, actually up 9% from 2013. Five year censuses were the norm, but concern about shrinking food sources have lead them to begin yearly ones.

More Puffins.
More Razorbills.
More Common Murres.