Polar seabirds including penguins and albatrosses are among the species most acutely affected by climate change. Their welfare challenges provide early indicators of ocean ecosystem degradation.
Polar seabirds face welfare challenges that are both proximate - bycatch, plastic ingestion, disturbance - and systemic through climate change effects on their food webs. Chicks that receive insufficient food because parents must travel further for prey experience nutritional stress and may die before fledging. Adult birds making longer foraging trips experience greater energy expenditure and fatigue. Plastic ingestion causes digestive blockage and false satiety in albatross chicks fed plastic mistaken for food by parents. Climate-driven shifts in prey distribution force birds to adapt their foraging strategies, increasing energetic costs and predation risk. These welfare impacts are occurring against a background of population decline in many species, making the welfare of remaining individuals increasingly critical for species survival.