Although the restoration of puffins and other seabirds on some of the Gulf of Maine islands has been a great success, Project Puffin Director Dr. Stephen Kress is concerned about the implications of global warming and the increase of ocean temperatures and how these factors will affect the puffins.
Kress is also the leader of breeding puffins once on Eastern Egg Rock. He is rightly pleased with the success of puffin pairs and chicks on this historic breeding ground. But he is also concerned about global trends.
“Global warming is a huge issue,” Kress said. “Notice what is happening in Scotland and Iceland. With the abrupt climate change, there is low nesting success in the north.”
The rising sea in the Gulf of Maine is due to the condition of the northern melt down. “The slow rise coupled with extreme weather events could lead to flooding burrows on our islands,” Kress said. He is grateful that burrows and nests have not yet been inundated; but he is cautious about the future.
The rising sea levels are accelerating here due to additional melting of glacial ice, and a two-foot rise in the oceans is expected in the next 100 years, according to the Maine Geological Society.
Project Puffin was started by the National Audubon Society in 1973 to try and restore puffins to historic nesting islands in the gulf. Because these birds had been over-hunted in the 19th century, they had disappeared from Maine islands. The toll of eating the birds and their eggs and plucking their feathers for women’s hats left no place for reproduction. In 1973, scientists-including Kress- brought 954 puffin chicks from Newfoundland and transplanted them to artificial burrows on Eastern Egg Rock.
Eight years later the first chick was reared on the island. Seal Island became re-colonized in 1992. Efforts to re-establish seabirds on uninhabited islands take a long time.
The two main techniques to lure puffins and other seabirds back to a nesting island are social attraction and translocation. These techniques are also used to entice birds to return to the mainland. Carefully painted decoys and piped-in birdcalls create a critical mass to attract seabirds to land on an island. It’s then possible to find a mate, breed and dig a three-foot-long burrow to build a nest and welcome the chick. Razorbills and roseate terns are also returning to Maine islands.
The success of restoring breeding puffins and other seabirds in the Gulf of Maine has caught the attention of other countries, which have the same concerns of climate changes and increasing water levels. Project Puffin has helped scientists restore threatened populations of seabirds all over the world.
Japanese ornithologists have had luck in saving the short-tailed albatross by using the social attractions first tried on Eastern Egg Rock. Egg, chick and full-grown albatross decoys, sound recordings and mirrors create a critical mass for the birds to find a mate and build a nest, according to Kress.
On the island of Torishama in southern Japan, the albatrosses have returned. There are several hundred breeding pairs. The island, however, is volcanic. With possible devastation from an eruption, the scientists are also using a non-volcanic island as a back up for breeding. Kress chuckled as he commented on “their eggs are not in one basket anymore.”
The national bird of Bermuda, the cahow or Bermuda petrel, is another rare bird that has been helped by techniques pioneered at Project Puffin. Castle Harbor’s little islands allowed breeding petrels until rats swam to them and ate their chicks. In the 1970s with the help of artificial, concrete burrows, 65 pairs of cahows mated. Then the islands eroded due to extreme storms. As the ocean level rose and the storms unleashed unusually high tides, the burrows were flooded. Nesting wasn’t possible. At first the petrels’ burrows were moved to higher ground, then to another island, Nonesuch. Some of the chicks had to be moved and, in 2003, reared by hand, according to Kress. Next year these chicks should breed. Translocation was a critical component in saving these chicks. Recordings and decoys also encouraged the cahows to ‘adopt’ Nonesuch Island and call it home.
The Galapagos Islands have shared similar experiences in saving the dark-rumped petrel. The first step the naturalists took was eradicating rats that had invaded one of the islands. The core population has been preserved; yet efforts will continue.
The potential for flooded burrows and nesting grounds remains in the Gulf of Maine. Joe Kelley, chair of Earth Sciences at the University of Maine, Orono, used to work for the Maine Geological Survey that has studied Portland’s tide gauge and waterfront.
Storm tides create surges, and the wind from Northeasters leads to coastal and island eroding. Trans-locating chicks to a higher nesting spot on islands or beaches is a possible avenue for overcoming rising oceans.
Another concern with warmer earth temperatures (5 degrees Fahrenheit is one suggested temperature increase) is the ocean waters heating up. Puffins need to catch fish that live in cold waters. With global warming, the fish distribution could well be affected. The birds’ ocean-flying range would also be limited.
Project Puffin Visitor’s Center in Rockland has more details about puffins and the Maine islands where they breed. Kress is “greatly encouraged about people making a difference in the successful restoration of seabirds on islands. Now they must broaden the range of nesting birds to include shore lands.”
The Project Puffin Visitor Center is located at 311 Main St., Rockland. For more information, call 287-2724 or go to www.projectpuffin.org.