Tufted Puffins Are Vanishing Across the Pacific Northwest—Can an Ambitious New Effort Save Them?

On a misty August morning in Cannon Seashore, Oregon, Rebecca McGoldrick’s neon-yellow boots gleam like little lighthouses on the moist sand. Her consideration is riveted to a tripod-mounted digicam with a telephoto lens targeted on a big sea stack. She counts to herself as curious beach-walkers drift over one after the other. Quickly, she’s drawn a crowd asking what she’s .

“Puffins,” McGoldrick says.

Puffins on the Pacific Coast? Sure—Tufted Puffins. Of their breeding apparel of bulbous orange payments, white masks, and pale-yellow plumes flaring from their faces like Gandalf’s eyebrows, the West Coast’s Tufted Puffins are each bit as cute as their Atlantic Puffin cousins—if not as well-known. Guests to this resort city go from incredulous to thrilled when McGoldrick factors out the upright black figures with vibrant carrot honkers loafing on the mound referred to as Haystack Rock.

“I’ve been right here many instances and I had no thought they’d puffins,” says Vancouver, Washington, resident Alan Graham. He and his daughter, June, beam as they take turns trying via McGoldrick’s lens.

It’s little shock that these flashy birds are so incognito. Tufted Puffins spend most of their lives far out on the deep ocean. They solely enterprise onto strong floor to nest in burrows on rocky headlands and small islands across the North Pacific, the place they’re largely out of sight from the mainland. What’s extra, whereas the species general is at present deemed wholesome—its international inhabitants is estimated at three million people, the overwhelming majority of which breed in Alaska—it has just lately skilled sharp declines throughout the southern portion of its vary. Tens of 1000’s as soon as bred within the California Present marine ecosystem, from San Francisco Bay to southern British  Columbia. At this time they quantity about 2,000.

The dramatic lack of Tufted Puffins has spurred an formidable new partnership within the Pacific Northwest. For years, nonprofits like Friends of Haystack Rock, authorities companies, and lecturers throughout the area have been advocating for and finding out the species. Every entity largely labored by itself till final yr, after they joined forces and launched the Tufted Puffin Working Group to higher perceive and handle the decline. The purpose is to develop a complete technique to revive populations from California to Canada, says Katherine Luscher of Audubon’s Seabird Institute, who’s coordinating the group and overseeing a few of the initiatives. “However first we’ve got to higher perceive why the numbers are reducing.”

To assist reply that query, this previous summer time researchers and neighborhood scientists have been out in power counting birds, analyzing what they’re consuming, and monitoring their reproductive success.

Some, like McGoldrick, monitor from shore. The affected person kindergarten instructor spent her summer time trip as a volunteer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Seabird Institute, tallying the variety of puffins each half hour amid a backdrop of surfers and kite-flyers, guillemots and gulls. In between counts, she and different screens make notes on actions within the colony, similar to mother and father swooping in with a billful of fish to feed their younger. They usually area questions from bystanders. (Some of the frequent is “Are these penguins?”) Different members, like former Air Pressure mechanic Jeff Emanuel, motor out to island colonies, the place grey whales spout and Widespread Murres raft alongside the boat as individuals onboard depend puffins. Nonetheless others fly drones, snapping pictures to investigate the panorama and reveal threats, similar to poor habitat situations.

The information the coalition is gathering will make clear native and ecosystem-wide dangers to this understudied species. Like seabirds in every single place, puffins’ troubles on land sign critical adjustments within the sea. The North Pacific is among the most quickly warming ocean basins on the planet, with rising sea temperatures and different local weather change-driven shifts already making a tougher setting for marine life. 

Scientists are involved that the issues now plaguing Tufted Puffins on the southern extent of their vary are a preview of what’s to return of their core habitat to the north. If the coalition can work out what’s driving the decline within the California Present and learn how to assist that inhabitants survive, it may assist safeguard the species as an entire within the unsure many years forward.

Tufted Puffins are hardy mariners. At a couple of foot tall, they tower over their Atlantic cousins and are heftier than Horned Puffins, which inhabit most of the similar waters however primarily breed farther north. In comparison with these different puffins—in addition to guillemots, murrelets, murres, and different members of the auk household—additionally they spend essentially the most time far out at sea.

All through most of their roughly 20 years of life, Tufted Puffins reside on deep water, clad in darkish plumage, secluded, and rarely seen. Within the frigid Bering Sea and throughout the Central Pacific Ocean from North America to Asia, they dive as much as 200 toes deep for prey similar to jellyfish and squid.

Then, starting round March, they arrive at distant breeding colonies that arc alongside the North Pacific Rim, from northern California’s foggy Farallon Islands on the east aspect to Japan’s snowy Hokkaido on the west. They arrive dressed to impress, with flamboyant head plumes, vivid invoice extensions, vibrant eyeliner, and stockings. {Couples}, which typically mate for all times, reunite after winters aside, whereas first-time breeders kind new bonds. Pairs reclaim their previous burrows or dig new ones utilizing their exhausting payments and toes to carve winding tunnels a number of toes deep, then lay a single egg.

Chicks stay underground whereas their mother and father forage, returning with invoice a great deal of as many as 20 small fish, similar to herring and anchovies, a number of instances a day. When the chicks are six to eight weeks previous, the exhausted adults head again to sea, leaving the now-grown children to fend for themselves. The hungry pufflings emerge on their very own and, beneath the quilt of darkness, fly right down to the ocean, the place they’ll stay for 3 years or longer earlier than returning to their natal colony to breed.

Past these fundamentals, nevertheless, a lot about these birds stays a thriller. Little is thought about their migration routes, as an example, or the place they go and the situations they face on the open ocean. Lengthy-term inhabitants knowledge are scarce because of the remoteness of their colonies and the problem of counting them in underground burrows. The species can be extremely delicate to disturbance, which might trigger mother and father to desert their nest—ruling out using hands-on analysis strategies and gear similar to satellite tv for pc trackers on this struggling inhabitants. Due to such challenges, “we simply know much less about Tufted Puffins basically,” says Don Lyons, conservation science director on the Seabird Institute. “And definitely much less about what’s driving their inhabitants decline, notably in Oregon and Washington.”

Habitat harm, invasive species, and predators are all contributing elements, says Scott Pearson, an avian ecologist with the Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife who’s seen the results of all three. “The one factor I fear most about, although, is international local weather change and the warming of the ocean,” he says.

Rising sea temperatures pose a number of challenges. The ocean’s rising warmth load is amping up winter storms at sea, decreasing puffins’ capability to feed through the nonbreeding season. Marine heat waves—unusually excessive ocean temperatures for a minimum of 5 straight days—are additionally changing into extra frequent and intense. These plenty of hotter water hinder cool, nutrient-loaded upwellings from the depths, displacing the cold-dependent fish that puffins and different seabirds prey on. That forces mother and father to journey farther to forage for his or her chicks. In consequence, nests could fail, and adults could even starve.

Take the Blob, essentially the most infamous of the Northeastern Pacific’s current spate of marine warmth waves. From 2014 to 2016, ocean temperatures spiked as a lot as seven levels Fahrenheit, killing 1000’s of Tufted Puffins, together with monumental numbers of Widespread Murres, Cassin’s Auklets, and different alcids.

Furthermore, research present that seabird populations have been gradual to bounce again from such die-offs. Many species lay just one egg a yr, and chicks take a number of years to mature. As marine warmth waves happen extra usually or change into extra extended, populations could not have time to recuperate in any respect.

Resulting from these dynamics, the outlook for the Pacific Northwest’s Tufted Puffins is bleak. Whereas southern colonies are seeing the best drops, the birds are shedding floor all through a lot of their vary, and climate-driven perils are creeping north. Marine warmth waves, for instance, are projected to change into extra frequent and extreme from California to Alaska. Giant colonies within the Gulf of Alaska, house to greater than a 3rd of North America’s Tufted Puffins, are already beginning to wane—and will disappear inside a century.

Finding out Tufted Puffins may do greater than assist the species. It may additionally present insights into the altering ocean. When nesting, says Lyons, these deep-diving, far-ranging seabirds are out sampling the marine setting many instances a day. “If we take heed to what they may inform us via their alternative of meals or their capability to efficiently increase younger,” he says, “we stand to be taught quite a bit concerning the ocean that may be very exhausting to be taught in any other case.”

Whereas conservationists and scientists know there aren’t any fast fixes to the challenges dealing with ocean ecosystems, their findings may assist information fishery administration plans or designate marine protected areas. The members of the Tufted Puffin Working Group are additionally methods to spice up the birds on land, giving them a greater probability at surviving the shocks of marine warmth waves and different pressures at sea.

On a small island off northern Washington, Pearson smiles as he watches a puffin arrive with a load of small silver fish dangling from its invoice. The chook lands on a grassy hillside, struts over to a gap the width of a cereal bowl and disappears inside. “That’s burrow quantity two,” says Pearson. “My favourite burrow!” 4 years in the past Pearson witnessed the couple now elevating their third chick dig this cavity. “Sooner or later I noticed a bunch of grime flying, after which they each got here out and their heads have been all brown,” he recollects.

Over the previous 15 years, Pearson and Peter Hodum, a College of Puget Sound conservation biologist, have been monitoring Tufted Puffin colonies at 40 websites alongside the Washington coast and Salish Sea, which extends from the southern tip of Puget Sound to the northern stretches of Vancouver Island. The earlier night, they motored out via the Quillayute Needles Nationwide Wildlife Refuge and camped right here on Destruction Island, a protracted, flat islet topped by a decommissioned lighthouse and off-limits to the general public.

Pearson picks up his binoculars to take one other depend. He scans land, sky, and water for the following 30 seconds, tallying puffins. The birds are engaged of their morning social habits: strutting round like proud owners, mates affectionately clacking payments, mother and father resting earlier than their subsequent foraging run. Between counts, Pearson images birds arriving with meals; later he’ll study the photographs to find out the fish species. He additionally retains observe of which burrows obtain deliveries—a telltale signal they include chicks. Hodum, in the meantime, steps gingerly throughout the hill, rigorously snaking an infrared digicam into burrows to test for chicks and assess their improvement.

As many as 350 pairs of Tufted Puffins bred on this 30-acre island half a century in the past. This yr, there are simply 12 {couples} and solely 10 chicks.

One of many suspects within the colony’s decline hops openly uphill. Somebody, probably a former resident lighthouse keeper, introduced European rabbits to the island someday within the 1900s. Now they run wild. The voracious grazers have devoured massive swaths of the island’s thick, native perennial vegetation, permitting brief, non-native annual grasses to take maintain. In consequence, hillsides have eroded, destabilizing the terrain the place puffins and different seabirds nest. Slumps have crushed burrows—and probably some occupants. The colony has misplaced a minimum of 5 burrows prior to now eight years, Hodum says.

Wildlife officers have been creating a restoration plan for Destruction Island that might start as early as subsequent fall. It requires restoration consultants to eradicate the rabbits after which substitute the annual grasses with native vegetation to shore up the terrain. As a closing step, Pearson and Hodum are contemplating drilling holes within the stabilized hillside to provide puffin {couples} a head begin on new burrows, in addition to setting out decoys to entice the social birds to take a look at the brand new digs and, ideally, take up seasonal residence.

It’s a well-established method for rebuilding seabird colonies, pioneered by Audubon’s Challenge Puffin within the Eighties when decoys painted to resemble actual birds proved invaluable for restoring Atlantic Puffins to historic breeding colony websites in Maine. Pearson and Hodum have begun making an attempt the method on the solely two colonies remaining within the Salish Sea. On Smith Island, the place round 21 pairs nest right now, the decoys appear to be producing slightly curiosity. “People have seen some Tufted Puffins associating with the decoys, a minimum of briefly,” says Hodum.

At Safety Island, 15 miles south, at present house to only one couple, new puffin neighbors haven’t been drawn in by the looks of a thriving colony—although Bald Eagles have. “They assault the decoys virtually day by day,” Pearson says. On Smith and elsewhere within the area, rebounding populations of Bald Eagles are menacing colonies, stopping mother and father returning with meals from touchdown. It’s a sophisticated concern to deal with, because of the eagle’s federally protected standing.

Luscher hopes to get an identical decoy challenge or two underway in Oregon subsequent summer time. Researchers there have begun utilizing drones to survey puffin habitat, search for lively burrows, and determine areas for restoration. Scans may very well be compiled into three-dimensional fashions that enable scientists to determine which colonies can be greatest in a position to assist a bigger inhabitants. After that they’d intention to translocate pufflings that, hopefully, would fledge from their new houses and return there to breed and develop the inhabitants—one other method that helped restore Atlantic Puffin populations in Maine. Marine warmth waves have additionally hit these restored colonies exhausting lately, however to date they’re remaining pretty steady within the face of local weather change.

As they work collectively towards a greater future for Tufted Puffins, scientists and volunteers alike respect these enigmatic voyagers. Maybe nobody admires them greater than Tim Halloran does. The retired highschool biology instructor has spent 20 hours per week monitoring the colony at Haystack Rock each summer time since 2012 as a volunteer for the FWS. Hours of commentary have solid a deep connection to the species. “It’s a extremely noble chook that offers with so many tough forces,” says Halloran, who formally retired from monitoring final yr however nonetheless visits the colony almost each week.

Working in Tufted Puffins’ favor, nevertheless, is the fascination and marvel they encourage in everybody who encounters them. As Halloran scopes Haystack Rock for the umpteenth time, a person comes working over. “Are there puffins?” shouts Bobby Wells, Jr. He and his pal Sergio Perez virtually leap with pleasure as Halloran factors out the orange-tipped flying footballs winging house to their younger. “We’re from Texas,” Wells says. “After we heard there have been puffins right here, we simply needed to see them.”

This story initially ran within the Winter 2025 concern as “The Puffin Brigade.” To obtain our print journal, change into a member by making a donation today.