Page 48 - World of Animals - Issue #29

Atlantic puffi n

Tied to the ocean

Puffins depend on a supply of small, oily fish for survival

Atlantic puffins live in and around the vast, Atlantic puffins rely on the ocean for survival; enough for their chicks. In other areas, larger

choppy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, puffin pairs lay just one egg each year, and fish have moved in and displaced the smaller
perching on wave-battered rocks and nesting raising the chick requires a steady supply of ones, leaving little for the puffins to eat.

on offshore islands. They spend the majority high-energy food in the form of small, oily fish Adult Atlantic puffins are also struggling out

of their lives out at sea, and relatively little is like sand eels and sprats. The birds return to at sea. Much less is known about their feeding
known about where they go or what they eat the same breeding areas every year, and can’t habits away from the shore, but the birds
when they are away from land. just move to new nesting sites when food is dive to catch their prey and are vulnerable to
More than 90 per cent of the Atlantic puffins scarce, so changes in the local waters can hit changes in the water. Puffins sometimes get

in the world live in Europe, and of those, around colonies hard. caught up in gill nets hanging beneath the

80 per cent return to Iceland and Norway to Climate change and overfishing are changing surface, and they are particularly affected by oil

breed. These puffin strongholds used to be the balance of species in the waters. For spills and water pollution.

home to thriving colonies, but over the last 15 instance, even though sand eels (which are There are still millions of Atlantic puffins left,

years the populations have been declining. key prey species for puffins) aren’t eaten by but they are living in a precarious environment.

There are thought to be roughly five million humans, we are increasingly harvesting them Puffin conservation scientists have started

breeding pairs of Atlantic puffins left in the for use in agriculture and fish oil products. In tagging the birds to find out where they go

wild, but according to the IUCN, numbers could some places, the size of the small fish in the during the winter, and are coordinating with

decrease by half before 2065. In some places waters surrounding puffin territories has been oceanographers and marine biologists to find

the birds have failed to breed year after year, decreasing over the last decades, meaning that out what is happening in the waters that might
and juvenile numbers have fallen dramatically. the adults have to spend longer at sea to catch be contributing to their decline.
Environmental factors

Atlantic puffi ns depend on their ocean habitat for survival
Climate change
Changes in water temperature have

altered the types of fish living near to

puffi n colonies. In some areas their

normal food has le , and in others

larger fish have moved in.
Predators

Large colonies of puffi ns are a
tempting food source for predators.
Species brought to isolated island
shores by humans (like cats, rats and
mink) can pose a serious threat.
Breeding failure
Since 2003, some puffi n colonies in

Europe have been repeatedly failing.
Adults are abandoning their eggs,
chicks are malnourished, and only a
few juveniles make it out to sea.
Human activity

In some areas, breeding puffi ns have
to compete for space with livestock,
farmland and tourists. In Iceland,

puffi ns are also hunted for meat and
are a traditional delicacy.

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