Canada (Commonwealth Union)_ The helpers who rescue Atlantic puffin fledglings — called “pufflings” — recognized something was incorrect when so limited strays from the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula appeared this summer.
The fledglings appeared from their den at night to avoid predators, but some are fascinated to the lights in the fast-growing societies on shore. Associates of a group named the Puffin Patrol capture the stranded pufflings and free them into the ocean.
Sabina Wilhelm, a wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said, “The Puffin Patrol was not discovering very many birds,” and the birds that were found were essentially very low in body weight. Some were fewer than half the standard size for puffins in their time of life.
After analyzing a specimen of nests on the biological reserve where Atlantic puffins assemble each spring to breed, Wilhelm and her group revealed that numerous chicks had perished.
The grey discovery attaches the fortune of the Atlantic puffin — which is not only the official bird of Labrador and Newfoundland, but a universal image in the province — with grave problems in ocean ecosystem, including heating ocean temperatures and a stressed, multifaceted food web.
Examinations ruled out avian flu, which instigated a huge die-off of birds in 2022. Based on the body mass and just raising up the deceased chicks, that were merely skin and bones, essentially died of starvation.
Adult puffins dive for sustenance such as capelin, a silage fish that can make up as abundant as 50 per cent of their diet, and transport it back to the nest, a hole in the cliffs. But when food is threatened, the adults feed themselves, and the fledgling are left to starve.
Another irregularity is that puffins reproduce later this year, Wilhelm said. Usually, they begin fledging in early August and by the end of that month, early September, most of them disappeared, she said.
There appears to have been this disparity amid breeding action and the fact that capelin kind of vanished…. Other years there may have still been a lot of capelins in August. That did not happen this year.
Warmer ocean temperatures also put pressure against Atlantic puffins, who can swim to a depth of only 50 meters to catch capelin and further forage fish such as herring and sandlance.
Wilhelm informed, If the fish are stirring downwards into the water column since the waters are warmer, then abruptly are not available to the puffins anymore since they are unable to dive that deep.
With more than 300,000 nesting pairs breeding at the Witless Bay Biological Reserve, the Atlantic puffin inhabitants are healthy overall, said Wilhelm.
Since they live well into their 20s, losing offspring in one year does not indicate disaster for the species. But the malnourishment of so many Atlantic chicks this year is a worry, Wilhelm added.
When tour boat operator Joe O’Brien observed deceased chicks floating on the water, he notified Wilhelm and her team. O’Brien, a prior fisherman, has been transporting tourists to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve for 39 summers.
With so many varieties, from cod to seabirds to whales, depending on capelin for their existence, O’Brien says it’s time for an innovative method to handling this fishery.
Should we be fishing for capelin at all? O’Brien asked. Shouldn’t this be an indication to the administration that we should alter our philosophy regarding the ocean?
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans classifies the capelin stock as “serious,” yet it permits commercial fishing of 14,533 tons in 2023 for the subsequent year in a row.
In its capelin administration plan, DFO said, Science demonstrates the fishery’s influence on capelin is small compared to predation by other types such as seabirds, cod and other fish.
Capelin are harvested using a purse seine, surroundings the fish, enclosing them into the net and constricting it, similar to a drawstring, before it’s dragged aboard a fishing vessel.
However, the species are a mere element of its plenty in the 1980s. As the major food for cod, capelin overfishing is documented as one of the main factors in the failure of northern cod stocks more than three decades ago.
Esteemed for its eggs, or roe, female capelin is sent to China, the United States, Japan and Taiwan.
