Atlantic puffins face mounting food insecurity as climate change shifts the distribution and abundance of sand eels and other small fish they depend on to feed themselves and their chicks.
Puffin chick starvation is a welfare crisis driven by ecosystem change. Chicks that receive inadequate sand eel deliveries from foraging parents lose weight progressively, weakening before eventual starvation or failure to fledge. Parental stress from unsuccessful foraging attempts that find no sand eels where sand eels should be creates chronic physiological stress. The solution to puffin welfare suffering lies primarily in addressing the ocean warming driving sand eel range shifts - making climate action directly equivalent to animal welfare intervention for this species.