Puffins & other things

Atlantic Puffins

Let’s start off with a few facts about puffins.

Puffins (Fratercula arctica) are seabirds in the auk family. They can live up to 25 years and are known to mate for life. Every year, puffins lay a single egg, and both parents share the responsibility of hatching and raising their baby, or a puffling, in their burrow. Puffins stay ashore during the warmer months of spring and summer but head out to sea as summer ends.

During the mating season, Atlantic puffins nest in colonies in burrows on small, rocky islands with short vegetation. These islands have fewer land predators such as foxes, rats, stoats, and feral cats, although puffins remain highly susceptible to these invasive species, which are among the more prevalent threats to puffins as a species. Puffins share these islands mainly with guillemots (common murres), razorbills, and kittiwakes (gulls). Seagulls, along with skuas that practise kleptoparasitism, pose threats by preying on pufflings and stealing puffins’ food.

Despite these threats, puffins don’t have many natural predators, except for seals, which are also known to kill them. Known for their docile and curious nature, puffins aren’t typically frightened by humans. If you approach them, they might walk or fly away, but if you stay still, they will usually go about their day, walking around their burrows. They do not necessarily shy away from human presence.

That said, it’s essential to keep away from their burrows! Being too close to the birds’ burrows puts the safety of the birds and their eggs at risk from disturbances and footfalls. You should not touch the puffins. Touching them is very harmful, as their feathers possess special properties that deflect water, and petting them compromises this. Most importantly, it is crucial to note that human intrusion has been one of the causes of nest desertion, which subsequently undermines breeding success and the overall population of puffins.

Endangerment and threats

Although usually seen in large colonies of hundreds, puffins are classified as vulnerable, with their total population in decline. Between 2003 and 2017, the puffin population decreased by almost 50%. This decline is primarily due to climate change, overfishing—particularly unsustainable commercial fishing—and marine pollution, namely plastic pollution, bycatch, and entanglements. Puffins face significant threats from changes in sea levels, temperature, and the availability of their food sources, such as small fish (mainly sand eels, which are their staple food), herrings, and planktonic crustaceans. They also have a low reproductive rate, with each pair laying only one egg and raising one chick per year. The survival rate of chicks is in constant decline, closely tied to the abundance of their food sources. According to puffin advocates of Audobon’s Project Puffin Seabird Restoration Program, “for puffins to get enough food, the right type of fish needs to be available at the right time of year, and in abundance.” The programme director also adds that “it has to be just the right shape or they can’t even swallow it.” In years when sand eels are scarce, breeding success rates drop sharply, and many chicks starve to death.

Encroachment of civilisation is harmful to wildlife, and puffins are no exception. As young puffins reach the age to leave their nests, they fledge (or start their first flight) at night. Naturally, they follow the moonlight to the sea, where they will spend years before returning to the colony to breed. However, with artificial city lights near puffin colonies, the young birds often mistake those for moonlight and become lost and stranded in the city, leading to inevitable accidents.

Oil spills have also had a devastating impact on marine life, including puffins and other seabirds. The Amoco Cadiz incident in 1978 alone resulted in the deaths of 1,391 puffins from the French colony, with a total of over 4,500 seabird casualties. The greatest impact of oil spills on puffins is the long-term harm to the conditions of adult puffins and the degradation of their ecosystem.

While hunting puffins is illegal in most countries, it remains a tradition in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, where puffins are still part of the local cuisine, despite calls to legalise puffin protection and prohibit their hunting. It has, indeed, been taken for granted as more than 50% of the total Atlantic puffins’ population resides in Iceland. However, with the global decline in puffin numbers due to warmer climates and local ongoing hunting, the situation has become increasingly critical. Fortunately, hunting puffins and eating puffin meat has become less common among Icelanders. Instead, puffin meat is often marketed as a tourist attraction for those seeking an “exotic” meal. This practice has raised ethical questions, as “exotic” implies rarity.

Puffins and climate change

Puffins are highly regional animals, limited to specific areas and not suited to reproduce outside their restricted habitats, not to mention their very specific dietary needs and their limited ability to thrive in particular climates.

Food availability and quality are crucial to breeding performance and, in the bigger picture, the species’ eventual survival. Forage fish such as sand eel, sprat, herring, and capelin dominate the diet of many common seabird species in the northeast Atlantic. Consequently, changes in the abundance of these fish have implications not only for puffins but also for other endemic seabird species.

The abundance of fish that feed the puffins is affected by changes in sea level and temperature, causing these fish to go deeper in the sea or further out in the ocean. Puffins can only dive to a depth of about 60 metres at best. Foraging at greater distances can also be energetically costly for them, which, in turn, adversely affects their breeding performance and success rates.

We are only familiar with puffins during the four months they spend on the shore at their burrows. For the rest of the year, they shed their colourful parts, donning black and white plumage, and winter at sea. During this time, climate change poses significant challenges, increasingly to a fatal extent. With extreme climate change, weather patterns have become more turbulent and severe: summers are warmer, and winters are harsher. Winter storms at sea have become life-threatening to seabirds, including puffins. Feeding conditions have become more difficult, and as many as thousands do not survive the season. We have witnessed more seabirds washing ashore, starving and unable to withstand the storms, many nests with chicks wrecked, and breeding success in certain colonies as low as 0%.

Seabirds are top marine predators and valuable indicators of the health of the ocean ecosystem. Puffins are philopatric, meaning they return to the same area—specifically, their usual colony and the same burrow where they raised their young the previous year, along with their breeding mate. Their behavioural changes, adaptations, and subsequent population declines, therefore, reveal the magnitude of climate change’s impact.

Threats to the survival of these species have dire consequences for the entire ocean ecosystem. Experts warn that, if current trends continue, puffin numbers may not recover. This, of course, applies to wildlife of all species.