Seabirds including puffins, kittiwakes, and terns are suffering breeding failures as warming seas shift their fish prey away from nesting colonies — causing mass starvation of chicks.
Chicks that are not fed enough starve slowly in the nest over days, while adults return repeatedly with inadequate prey or nothing. Parents subject to failed breeding have expended enormous energy for no reproductive return. The welfare cost to individual birds of climate-driven prey failure is continuous and chronic across entire breeding seasons.