Atlantic Seabird Tragedy
Last modified: 04 March 2014
Winter storms kills at least 28,000 seabirds in the NE Atlantic
During February more than 1,000 dead seabirds were found around the coasts of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset in SW England.
Birds also washed up on beaches elsewhere around the UK (including 600 in Wales) and more than 1,000 have been recorded in the Channel Islands.
Only a small proportion has been found alive. Reports are still coming into the RSPB as birds continue to wash up. More than 20 different species have been recorded with the major casualties being auks (guillemots, razorbills and puffins) with smaller numbers of kittiwakes, gannets, fulmars, gulls and shags.
Massive seabird mortality was reported by RSPB’s partner organisation Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO) along the coast of SW France (northern Bay of Biscay) where 21,567 dead (and 2,784 live birds), had been recorded ashore by the end of February, with reports of fishermen seeing dead birds `carpeting the sea’. More than 200 dead seabirds (mostly guillemots) have been recorded on northern Spanish beaches.
Reports are still being collated but the combined recorded death toll is expected to exceed 28,000. Other affected birds will have died at sea or ashore, unobserved and unrecorded.
Puffins have fared particularly badly, with more than 30 reported dead around the UK, 97 dead in the Channel Islands and 14,455 dead and 1086 live found on beaches in SW France. These small birds can’t dive very deep to find their food and storm turbulence means fish are likely to move deeper in the water column to find calmer conditions. Even if fish are still close enough to the surface for puffins, the RSPB says that feeding in storm-tossed seas must be akin to trying to see and catch fish inside a washing machine set on spin..........read more here
http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/365357-atla ... utm_source