Atlantic puffins are seabirds closely tied to specific prey species and nesting conditions, making them acutely vulnerable to the combined pressures of climate change, prey depletion, and introduced predators at breeding colonies.
Atlantic puffin chicks that starve in the nest after parents fail to find adequate sand eel supplies experience prolonged starvation before death. Adults that fly hundreds of kilometres in search of prey for chicks that have already died face significant energetic loss with no reproductive gain. At colony sites with rat predation, adults returning to nests may find eggs or chicks taken, creating repeated breeding failures despite persistent investment. Chicks that fall from burrows into the sea before fledging drown rapidly. The welfare calculus of climate-driven colony failure involves millions of individual chicks dying across the breeding range in poor years. Long-lived adults that survive multiple breeding failures without raising offspring face repeated reproductive frustration across decades.