Wild Puffin Welfare and Marine Threats

Atlantic puffins face welfare challenges from climate-driven prey collapse, plastic ingestion, and entanglement in fishing gear as their populations decline.

Key Facts

Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) populations have declined by over 50% in some colonies since the 1980s.
Puffins rely on sand eels and small fish for feeding chicks — warming seas are displacing sand eel populations northward.
Chick starvation occurs when parents cannot find adequate food within foraging range of breeding colonies.
Plastic ingestion is increasing in puffin populations — adults may feed plastic debris to chicks alongside fish.
Longline fisheries bycatch entangles and drowns puffins that dive to capture prey around baited hooks.

Welfare Considerations

Puffin welfare sits at the intersection of individual suffering and population collapse. Chick starvation — which occurs when parents cannot catch sufficient sand eels in warming seas — is a prolonged welfare harm for both the dying chick and the parent making increasingly long foraging flights in futile attempts to provision it. Plastic feeding to chicks causes blockage and starvation. The welfare case for addressing climate change, reducing plastic pollution, and managing fisheries for ecosystem health encompasses puffin welfare as a direct beneficiary.

What You Can Do

Support marine conservation organisations working on puffin colony monitoring and breeding success assessment.
Reduce single-use plastic consumption to lower the volume of marine plastic that reaches seabird feeding grounds.
Advocate for fisheries management that protects sand eel populations as a keystone prey species for seabirds.
Donate to organisations managing puffin breeding colonies and addressing predation, pollution, and climate impacts.