Atlantic puffins face breeding failure as sand eel populations collapse from warming seas, leaving chicks starving in burrows while parents return empty-beaked from exhausting fishing trips.
Puffin chicks starving in burrows because parents cannot find sufficient sand eels experience a protracted death from malnutrition. Parents returning from exhausting long-distance foraging trips empty-beaked exhibit behavior consistent with extreme frustration. The mismatch between puffin reproductive timing and the northward-shifted sand eel distribution is a climate welfare crisis — the birds cannot adapt their breeding season faster than the prey base is moving. Colony breeding failure means entire generations of chicks die each year without welfare intervention being possible.