Pufflings, the small chicks of the Atlantic puffin, are struggling due to a lack of food and warming ocean temperatures.
A puffin pokes its head out of its nest in Elliston.
After searching a sampling of nests on the ecological reserve where Atlantic puffins congregate to breed each spring, Wilhelm and her colleagues discovered that many chicks had perished. Adult puffins dive for food such as capelin, a forage fish that can make up as much as 50 per cent of their diet, and bring it back to the nest, a burrow in the cliffs.Another anomaly is that puffins bred later this year, said Wilhelm.
Wildlife biologist Sabina Wilhelm weighs and measures puffin chicks, or pufflings, who were found dead in their nests, having starved to death because capelin, their main food source, was not available this summer. Many of those gathered for testing were less than half their normal size. When tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead chicks floating on the water, he alerted Wilhelm and her colleagues.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans categorizes the capelin stock as "critical," yet it allowed a commercial fishery of 14,533 tonnes in 2023 for the second year in a row. Valued for its eggs, or roe, female capelin is exported to China, the United States, Taiwan and Japan, The effects of fishing a forage species, a rapidly warming ocean due to climate change, increasing amounts of artificial light, seabird hunting and monofilament fishing nets are cumulatively stacked against seabirds' long-term survival, said Jones.
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