Atlantic puffin colonies are failing to raise chicks as warming seas and industrial fishing deplete the sandeels they depend on to feed their young.
Puffin chicks starving in burrows experience prolonged hunger stress before death, with parents making futile fishing trips returning without food. Adults unable to provision chicks adequately suffer distress indicators in failed breeding attempts. Warming seas cause puffins to spend more energy thermoregulating and searching for food, increasing nutritional stress. Chronic breeding failure across multiple consecutive years reduces population resilience.