Ireland may lose puffins as seas warm and food for chicks gets more scarce

According to the last available figures, there are an estimated 21,000 pairs of puffins in Ireland, which can mostly be seen along its west coast.

The birds can be viewed by the public on boat tours around Ireland’s Eye off the coast of Howth in Dublin and at the Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare.

According to a study carried out on the puffin population on Skellig Michael, located off the Co Kerry coast, 7,380 individual puffins were recorded on the slopes, flying over and resting on the surrounding waters of the site on May 5 this year, followed by 8,236 the following evening.

Birdwatch Ireland’s head of communications Niall Hatch said it was unclear exactly how many pairs of puffins there are currently in Ireland.

“We do know that Ireland is of international importance to puffins, we have some very large puffin colonies around the Irish coast,” he said. “But more survey work needs to be done to see how their chicks are surviving.”

Mr Hatch said each pair of puffins produced just one chick, or puffling, a year.

They nest in underground burrows, which makes it more difficult to count them compared with other seabirds that would nest on ledges out in the open.

“So the fact is that things may look well with puffins because we’re seeing lots of adults around, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the chicks are surviving and that the adults are breeding successfully,” he said.

He said climate change, unsustainable overfishing and plastics in the sea, which can block the birds’ digestive systems, could also be affecting their breeding attempts.

As ocean temperatures rise, plankton can move further north to colder waters, which have more oxygen in them.

“Then the small fish follow the plankton and the small fish are the food that the puffins need to feed their chicks,” said Mr Hatch.

“So where it may be the case that the adult puffins can go out to sea and feed – they spend most of the year out in the mid Atlantic Ocean – they can find food out there well away from land, but their chicks are back on land.

“So if the fish end up too far away, it’s too far for the parents to bring fish back to the chicks. And that’s thought to be a major reason why we’re seeing population collapses in many parts of the North Atlantic. We still do not fully know the picture in Ireland.”

Mr Hatch said it was understandable that members of the public would want to view the cartoon-like bird, but said they should always do it in a “non-intrusive” way.

“We would urge people to do it in a way that doesn’t impact on them,” he said.

“They’re very appealing to people. There’s something very comical about them, something very cute.

“That sort of ‘clown make-up’ look they have on their face, those big beaks that they have – they almost look like a cartoon.

“Of course people really would like to see them.”

“There’s many ways to do that: around Dublin, getting a boat from Howth around Ireland’s Eye and watching the puffins in the water; and going to places like Sceilg Mhichil and seeing them on the rocks, but keeping your distance.

“One of the very best places in Ireland to see puffins without any impact on them at all would be the Cliffs of Moher.

“They are home to thousands of puffins during the summer and they’re quite easy to see there, so that’s what we’d recommend.

“People should enjoy them, we’re keen for people to experience puffins as much as possible,” he said.

“But please remember that they’re not toys, they’re creatures that are frightened of us and we have to be careful not to disturb them.”

The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) said the last published population estimate of puffins on the island of Ireland had come from a book published in 2004, where it was estimated there was a breeding population of 21,000 pairs.

The NPWS’s Breeding Seabird Monitoring Programme

said work on increasing its level of understanding of this species was growing, citing its recent report into the puffin population on Sceilg Mhichil.