![]() Q: Describe a typical summer day for a researcher on an island colonized by puffins.Ī: From dawn to dusk, a research assistant will try to track the number and kind of fish that puffin parents are delivering to a particular chick. We have one of the longest and largest data sets out there on this. In the 1980s, we started watching the food that seabirds bring back to their chicks and now have over 30 years of data on what species feed their chicks. Q: What do you monitor about the puffins recolonizing these islands?Ī: We weigh and measure chicks, band birds, and, over the long term, record return rates and how long they live. Now about 1,300 pairs of puffins nest on five islands off the Maine coast. It was the first puffin colony ever restored. I set out to try to restore the colony on Eastern Egg Rock Island, and eventually birds started breeding there in response to what Audubon was doing. In 1969, when I was teaching at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine, I discovered that puffins once nested on nearby islands but had been gone for nearly 100 years. Q: How did you come to study seabirds?Ī: I was initially attracted to them when I visited nesting colonies in the Bay of Fundy in the late 1960s. The Pew Charitable Trusts spoke with Kress to discuss why forage fish, and especially Atlantic herring, matter to puffins. Kress’ project has helped puffins return to some of the uninhabited islands in the Gulf of Maine to nest. The behaviors and population fluctuations of these and other seabirds in the region tell scientists a lot about ocean health. ![]() Zoologist, wildlife manager, and environmental educator Steve Kress is a keen observer of New England’s marine ecosystem, which he studies as director of the Audubon Society’s Project Puffin.
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