<
https://www.pressherald.com/2024/08/18/record-number-of-breeding-puffins-recorded-on-island-in-gulf-of-maine/>
"From a bird blind on Seal Island, I watched as puffins zoomed in from the sea
with a rainbow of fish drooping from their beaks.
They carried copper and golden juvenile haddock, redfish and white hake. Others
had pink krill from massive upwellings that created magenta blotches just
offshore.
Some even carried bright silver herring: juicy fish that were once key prey for
puffins in Maine. Atlantic herring are also a prime commodity for humans, who
have overfished the species so badly that the fishery in New England has
routinely been shut down early in recent years.
To see a number of puffins bringing herring to chicks was a stirring reminder
of what the ocean can still offer.
Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest
Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It is now managed by the Audubon
Seabird Institute, and was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin
restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late
1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, 6 miles off Pemaquid Point.
Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins
began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992.
This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and a long-term
increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that
Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins.
The crew of Coco Faber, Amiel Hopkins, Liv Ridley, Reed Robinson and Nacho
Gutierrez counted 672 active puffin burrows, about 100 more than the last
census five years ago. The total number of known burrows surpassed 1,000 for
the first time.
Other birds also did well. Razorbills, a larger cousin of the puffin,
established a record of 101 active burrows."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/60-ready/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
