Angelic kittiwakes – so-named because of their screeching cry – were filmed soaring and wheeling alongside puffins when BBC cameras focused on the Atlantic’s spectacular seabird cities.

Today the kittiwake, a species of small gull with a dove-like head and long, silvery wings with black tips, has been officially placed on the Red List of species facing oblivion. Ironically, it joins the puffin on the same tally of vanishing birds.

The decision to classify the kittiwake as Vulnerable to extinction was taken by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature because its global numbers have plummeted by around 40 per cent since the 1970s. Previously, it was classed as a Least Concern species.

It is around the British coastline that the marine gull has witnessed much of its most serious decline, with overfishing and climate change major factors.

Kittiwakes depend on sandeels for their breeding success in the North Sea but they face competition from industrial-scale fishing.

The Royal Society for Protection of Birds says this is why it is vital for the UK to work with other countries on fisheries management when it leaves the European Union.

Back in the 1980s, there were as many 85,000 pairs of kittiwake nesting along the Yorkshire coast at spots such as Bempton Cliffs but now fewer than 12,000 pairs survive.

Away from the East Coast is where the greatest loss of kittiwakes is being witnessed, with numbers in Orkney and Shetland down by 87 per cent since 2000.

On the outer reaches of the Western Isles, as many as 96 per cent of kittiwakes breeding on the remote island of St Kilda have disappeared.

Rising sea temperatures driven by a changing climate are also likely to be having an impact on sandeel distribution, so adding to the kittiwake’s woes.

Dr Euan Dunn, the RSPB’s marine policy specialist, warns: “We need to ensure that the future management of the sandeel fishery is sustainable. If our internationally important populations of seabirds are going to cope with climate change, then we need to make sure industrial fisheries are not adding to their problems.

“This is an example of why fisheries policy is vital to the health of our seas. Our thinking on fisheries and marine protection must be as joined up as the seas on which we all rely.”

The kittiwake’s “uplisting” to Vulnerable means it has joined eight other species regularly seen in the UK that are now deemed at risk of extinction. They are: Atlantic puffin; European turtle dove; pochard; Slavonian grebe; Balearic shearwater; long-tailed duck; velvet scoter and aquatic warbler.