Puffins

The crazy winds were a bit distracting but nothing could pull me away from watching the sweet little puffins.

Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) spend the majority of their life at sea, but land on North Atlantic seacoasts and islands in the spring to breed.

Puffins are monogamous, meeting their mate year after year at their same burrow site. Using their beak and feet, they dig tunnels 3 feet long where the female lays one egg. Both parents take turns incubating it.

How they find their way back to the same burrow site is still unknown.

Puffin populations in Europe and Maine are in decline and climate change is thought to be the cause. Warming waters have caused fish and sand eels, their diet staples, to retreat to deeper waters, further away from puffin breeding grounds. This is further complicated by overfishing, causing a massive decline on puffin’s food.

Puffin populations in Newfoundland seem to be more stable, attributed to the Labrador current carrying cold water from Greenland and the Arctic, bringing capelin and other fish for the puffins to feed on.

But, if we continue at the same rate and our earth continues to warm, they’ll suffer a similar fate as their relatives in other parts of the world and their population too will decline. We already see capelin populations declining and pushing further into deeper waters. This has already been seen to have impact on cod in Newfoundland.

Dr. Cristina Allen ND