‘Puffin-nav’ will be used to track birds

Jul 1 2009 by Jon Tunney, The Journal

PUFFINS are being recruited to act as “investigators” in a probe into a dramatic decline in their numbers off the North East coast.

In what is a world-first move for puffins, scientists at Newcastle University are attaching three different types of electronic tags to the birds on the Farne Islands.

They will store information on where the birds forage for food, their diving behaviour as they seek fish and where they winter out at sea after the breeding season on the islands. The investigation by the scientists and National Trust wardens on the islands comes after a population count last year showed that breeding pairs had fallen to 36,855 compared to the last census five years earlier when the figure was 55,674.

The Farne Islands are home to the biggest colony of puffins in England. Newcastle University zoologist Dr Richard Beavan said: “The survey last year showed a massive decline and we just don’t know what has been happening since 2003.”

Trawls last year by the university’s boat Bernicia revealed very few sand eels or pipefish, which the puffins catch.

“We caught virtually nothing,” said Dr Beavan,.

The lack of stocks could be linked to the effects of climate change on plankton, on which the fish feed.

“We know there are changes going on in the marine environment to do with plankton and sea water temperature,” said Dr Bevan. “What we saw last year is what potentially could happen to all puffin colonies every year in the UK.

“Now we are using the puffins as monitors of the environment.”

Some birds are being fitted with lightweight GPS transmitters, which will tell the scientists the location of areas that the birds use to hunt for fish, which could be up to 60 miles from the islands.

Other birds will carry time-depth recorders which respond to water pressure.

These will reveal how deep the birds dive in their search for fish, how often they plunge and for how long. Later, geo-location devices will be attached to the leg rings of puffins and will stay in place for up to three years.

They will show if the adults winter in the North Sea or the North Atlantic and if they are suffering high fatalities.