Fishermen help clear lobster 'carnage' on east coast

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

By Danny Longhorn

A TEAM of 25 fishermen has come to the rescue of about 450 lobsters washed up on an east coast beach.

East Yorkshire's coastal wildlife has taken a battering with the cold temperatures and strong easterly winds.

Thousands of shellfish, fish and even a porpoise were found washed up along a one-mile stretch between Barmston and Fraisthorpe – the majority of which had starved to death.

RSPB volunteers have also picked up 200 dead puffins in the last ten days and now fear the population could have decreased by 10 per cent.

Jo Ackes, secretary at the Independent Shell Fishermens' Cooperative in Bridlington, said more than 25 fishermen tried to save as many of the shellfish as possible.

She said: "It was carnage on the beach with thousands of different animals.

"There was everything from a variety of fish and crabs, lobsters and even seabirds and a porpoise.

"We tried to save as many as possible and take them to our tanks. It was mainly some of the lobsters that had survived as they are a bit stronger.

"The reason (for them being there) was a combination of factors with the sea being unseasonably cold and the lobsters being quite lethargic and not getting enough food. They have also been battered by the easterly winds and huge tides."

In the end, about 450 lobsters were released off the coast yesterday morning about six miles out to sea.

Jo said: "It is difficult to say what impact it will have.

Read more: http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Fishermen-help-clear-lobster-carnage-east-coast/story-18595831-detail/story.html#ixzz2PW4qeIJX

Rain 'almost apocalyptic' for wildlife, says National Trust

The UK's recent rainy weather has been "almost apocalyptic" for some wildlife in 2012, the National Trust has said.

Cold, wet conditions have left many bees, bats, birds, butterflies and wildflowers struggling - with next year looking bleak too, it said.

But the National Trust pointed to some of wildlife's winners, including slugs and snails, which have managed to thrive in the inclement weather.

The news comes after the wettest April-June on record, and heavy rain in July.

The rain has been good for the UK's greenery, with gardeners tackling fast-growing lawns and the countryside booming with nettles, bracken and brambles, the National Trust said.

Mosses and plants such as early gentian and bee orchids, and twayblade, pyramidal and common spotted orchids have been thriving along the trackways of Whipsnade Downs in Bedfordshire.

But Matthew Oates, the trust's conservation adviser warned that the list of wet weather losers was far longer, and could lead to local extinctions of rare or isolated species, including butterflies.

Puffins drowned

The breeding season has been particularly catastrophic, with sea birds being blown off cliffs by gales and garden birds unable to find food for their young.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18849327

Why do we love Puffins?

8:44am Friday 9th July 2010

By Faith Eckersall

WITH their tangerine legs, striped beaks and crisp, monochrome plumage, what’s not to like about the puffin?

The enthusiasts, twitchers and members of the public who wouldn’t know an eagle from a budgie who have made the boat-trip to glimpse the Dorset colony of these avian celebs, certainly agree.

“People seem to love them,” says senior Ranger for Durlston Country Park, Katie Black, who helps care for the colony on Dancing Ledge.

Katie’s more of a guillemot woman herself but acknowledges: “They are very striking to look at, with their painted beaks and black and white plumage. Their walk is very comical too.”

Unlike the Farne puffins, whose numbers dipped alarmingly five years ago, the Dancing Ledge group have stayed remarkably stable at around 25 birds.

“They are very hard to spot because there’s not many of them and instead of living in burrows, like most puffins, they live in a split in the cliff,” says Katie.

They’re also difficult to see because they are actually much smaller than people imagine. “Only about the size of a human hand,” she says.

Despite proudly caring for what is the South’s most easterly puffin colony, the Durlston Rangers are happy to admit there’s still a lot they don’t know about them.

“We try to count accurately but it is tricky until you can actually see a chick,” says Katie.

“For us, even two more breeding puffins would be a good increase in the colony’s size.”

But there’s no shame in not knowing as scientists who attached GPS trackers to the Farne puffins have revealed this week that lots of the things they thought they knew about them were completely inaccurate.

Their birds don’t dive to 25 metres, they just go down five, and instead of going 60 miles out to sea they stick closer to land, homing in on ‘hotspots’ of fish.

The Dancing Ledge puffins are the remnants of what would have been a string of small colonies along this part of the South Coast.

It is thought that human activity has possibly lead to the demise of the rest.

They may even have been the inspiration for the characters Huffin and Puffin in Enid Blyton’s Sea of Adventure novel.

The author lived in Purbeck and was a keen visitor to Dancing Ledge, using its pool as the model for the one in her Malory Towers books.

Despite their Disney-esque appearance, puffins have a long and mysterious folklore.

It is claimed they were often referred to as ‘half-fish, half-flesh’ and people believed they were born from rotting pieces of wood, and not eggs.

During the Middle Ages it is thought that Muslim and Jewish scholars could not determine if various birds such as geese and puffins were fish or humans and called for them to be killed – warning the faithful not to eat them as they were creatures of unknown origin.

Now the only human eaters of puffins are the Norwegians and the Icelanders, who catch them in nets before killing them and turning them into dinner.

The rest of the human race, of course, just want to adore them.

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8263208.Why_do_we_love_Puffins_/
(Submitted by Mark North)

Puffins' winter odyssey revealed

Tuesday, 12 January 2010
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Puffins from the North Sea's largest breeding colony venture much further afield during the winter than previously thought, a study has shown.

More than 75% of the seabirds fitted with "geolocator" tags headed for the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean, rather than staying in the North Sea.

Until now, very little was known about where puffins went during the winter as the birds spent the entire time at sea.

The findings by British researchers appear in the journal Marine Biology.

Writing in the journal, a team of researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said: "The finding that more than three-quarters of the birds made a major excursion into the Atlantic was entirely unexpected."

They added it challenged the previous view that puffin populations on the east and west of Britain remained separate from each other, during both the breeding season and during the winter.

"What we were completely unprepared for was that they made a one-to-three-month trip into the Atlantic and then came back to the North Sea," said lead author Mike Harris.

He said the development of geolocators - small location loggers that weigh 1.5g, which are fitted to birds' legs - allowed the team to track the puffins' movements for the first time.

"One of the big gaps in seabird biology is what do they do during the winter," Professor Harris explained.

"So, it's fantastic when all of these problems that you thought you would never solve, but then a technology appears that allows us to get somewhere at last.

"Up until now, the devices that have been available to fit on birds have been too heavy for puffins, which only weigh about 400g.

"So once these (geolocator) tags became available and were working well, the puffin was an obvious choice to use them on."

During the 2007 breeding season, the team fitted 50 birds on the Isle of May, a National Nature Reserve off the east coast of Scotland, with geolocators.

The loggers work by measuring light levels, recording when dawn and dusk occurs each day.

With this data, researchers can calculate day length, when midday occurs, and the daily longitudinal and latitudinal co-ordinates for the individual bird.

The researchers retrieved 14 devices during the following spring, and were able to download data from 13 of the tags.

Migration mystery

Professor Harris, who has been studying puffins for 37 years, said that it was too early to suggest why the puffins were making the extended journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

"At the moment, we are trying to get more information on what they eat," he told BBC News.

"We do not really know what species of fish or crustacea they eat during the winter; the suggestion is that they eat less fish and more plankton.

"The problem has been that until we know where they go, we cannot know what they are eating and whether there has been a change in [food availability].

Adverse conditions that limited the birds' access to food was one hypothesis for why there was a dramatic fall in the population of North Sea puffins between 2003 and 2008.

Puffin numbers on the Isle of May had been increasing for half a century, with the population reaching about 69,300 pairs in 2003.

Yet a survey in 2008 recorded 41,000 pairs, less than half of the 100,000 pairs that would be expected if the previous rate of increase had continued.

A similar decline in puffin numbers has also been recorded on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, England's largest breeding colony of the seabirds.

A survey in 2008 recorded just 36,500 puffins, down from a record high of 55,674 in 2003.

Female puffins only lay one egg a year, so a high mortality rate among adults across a few years can quickly destabilise the population.

Professor Harris said that the population crash was unexpected.

"Puffins normally survive very well, and suddenly we had two years when they did not," he said.

Over the winter, the birds undergo their main moult in which they lose their wing feathers, making them flightless and vulnerable to adverse conditions, such as storms or poor food supplies.

Researchers are not sure how long puffins are left flightless, so the CEH team had hoped that a device on the tag that measured when the birds' feet were in seawater would provide an insight.

"What we didn't realise then but now know is that when puffins sleep they often tuck their feet into their plumage," Professor Harris revealed.

This behaviour meant that the tag dried out, recording an "in flight" reading when the bird in fact was still on the water.

"So we succeeded in one of our objectives, which was to find out where the puffins were going, but we failed on the other, which was to find out when the birds were flightless."

The team plan to continue fitting geolocators on puffins over the coming years, enabling them to build a better picture of the behaviour and movements of the birds during the winter months.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8452423.stm

Puffin warden wanted for Welsh island

A fresh start for the New Year is up for grabs - as a castaway on a remote island with just half a million birds for company.

Published: 10:09AM GMT 04 Jan 2010

The vacancy for the job as warden of Skomer Island is expected to attract hundreds of applications from people wanting to get away from it all.

It is being described as the British equivalent of The Best Job in the World - the competition held last year to find a warden for Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Skomer, two miles off the Pembrokeshire coast, has no blazing sunshine, coral reef or exotic wildlife.

But to those who want the great escape, it is closest Britain has to a desert island paradise.

It has no mains water, no electricity, no roads, shop, or pub, and is separated from the mainland by Jack Sound, one of the most treacherous stretches of water off the British coast.

It is inhabited by puffins, manx shearwaters, kittiwakes, razor bills and guillemots, along with thousands of wild rabbits.

It even has its own unique species - a tiny creature called the Skomer Vole which is not found anywhere else in the world.

The island is carpeted by bluebells throughout the spring and surrounded by a marine reserve, rich in sealife, including dolphins and porpoises.

And the new warden will live in a clifftop bungalow in the heart of the island's main puffin colony.

Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales chief executive Sarah Kessell said: "We are looking for a very special person to take care of our flagship reserve.

"The warden will have to manage people and resources, be familiar with conservation techniques and be confident on board boats."

The vacancy has come up because the current warden Jo Milborrow wants to return to the mainland after six years on Skomer and its sister island Skokholm.

She and her husband Dave, the assistant warden on Skomer, want a fresh challenge.

Jo, 33, said: "After six unforgettable years we have packed up and shipped our belongings off for the last time.

"I feel incredibly lucky to have lived in such an amazing place.

"Gaining an intimate knowledge of one place, its wildlife and seasonal rhythms are things I value greatly.

"This in-depth relationship with our surroundings is hard to establish in modern life."

The job pays between £14,000 and £16,000 for a 48 hours week with accommodation thrown in free.

Part of the work involves greeting the hundreds of birdwatchers and day trippers who arrive by the tiny ferry boat in the spring and summer - weather permitting.

But only the warden and a few overnight visitors get to see the island's greatest spectacle - the nightly arrival of hundreds of thousands of Manx Shearwaters, a rare seabird which lives underground.

A third of the world's breeding population of Manx Shearwaters breed each summer on Skomer before flying off to warmer climes in the winter.

Jo said: "To have shared my home with puffins, peregrine falcons, shearwaters and storm petrels and to be able to help protect these birds and inspire other people about them has been a high point of my life.

"I wish the new warden as many memorable times as we have been lucky enough to share."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6931016/Puffin-warden-wanted-for-Welsh-island.html

Tags to help solve puffin decline

Scientists are using hi-tech tags to get an insight into why the number of puffins at one of the UK's key colonies has mysteriously fallen by a third.

Researchers are fitting a variety of the devices on the seabirds that are nesting on the Farne Islands, located off the Northumberland coast.

A survey in 2008 recorded just 36,500 puffins, down from 55,674 in 2003.

The islands are considered a globally key site for seabirds, and are home to the largest puffin colony in England.

"Our population, year-on-year, had been increasing," said David Steel, the National Trust's head warden on the Farne Islands, "and we had seen big booms in numbers.

"In 2003, we hit an all-time high of 55,500 pairs, which was fantastic," he told BBC News.

"In 2008, we conducted our survey again and we thought that it would be a brilliant year with up to 70,000 to 80,000 pairs.

"However, we got the results and it was a disaster. In those five years, we had lost somewhere in the region of 33% of our breeding puffins."

The reason for the sudden fall in the birds' population left scientists and conservationists both puzzled and concerned for the long-term future of the species in the North Sea.

"The puffins leaving the Farnes were actually having some very good seasons," explained Mr Steel.

"The adults were coming back, they were breeding well, the number of chicks fledging from the islands was superb.

"Yet the birds were not coming back after the winter period, so what has been happening out there?"

Richard Bevan, a biologist from Newcastle University, is leading the team that is tagging the puffins on the Farnes' Brownsman Island.

He explained that a variety of devices were being attached to the birds.

"A lot of tagging uses satellites, where the tag transmits to the satellite and then the satellite sends the data down to the researchers' offices," he told BBC News.

"But we cannot do that with small birds, because they will not be able to carry the weight of the devices."

Guidelines stipulate that the tags cannot exceed 4% of the bird's weight. On average, an adult puffin weighs about 400g, which means the attached tag must be no more than 16g.

"So what we are using are 'GPS loggers'; They are basically archival devices because they store information rather than transmit it in real-time," Dr Bevan added.

"The tag will record the position of the bird every minute. It will do this for about three to four days, during which time the birds will have been out on a number of foraging trips."

The devices are attached to the birds with a glue that weakens after about four days, allowing the tags to be recovered and the data downloaded.

"Once we understand where they are going, then we can begin to look at why they go there."
These tags, along with time/depth recorders that will show how the birds dive for fish, will offer a snapshot of the puffins' foraging behaviour during the summer months they spend on the Farne Islands.

However, the researchers are particularly keen to understand where the birds go during the winter months because this is the period when many puffins are believed to perish.

Dr Bevan explained that his team are fitting devices called geolocators, which are much smaller than GPS loggers and can be permanently fitted to a bird's leg ring.

That means that the bird can go away and do whatever it does, and as long as it comes back at some point then we will be able to get a record of where it has been."

The tiny tags measure light levels, recording when dawn and dusk occurs each day. With this data, researchers can calculate day length, when midday occurs, and the daily longitudinal and latitudinal co-ordinates for the individual bird.

"These devices are important for the out-of-breeding season because we know very little about what the birds are doing," said Dr Bevan.

"We have got an idea that they are spending their time out in the North Sea, but are they? How much time are they spending out there? Where are they going?

"What is happening in the winter is important. If there is something that is affecting the adults, then that has serious consequences for the species."

Female puffins only lay one egg a year, so a high mortality rate among adults across a few years can quickly destabilise the population.

It was not only the Farne Islands that saw a sharp decline in puffin numbers. The UK's largest single puffin colony on the Isle of May, in the Firth of Forth, also recorded a substantial fall of at least 30% in 2008 from 2003 levels.

Researchers led by Professor Mike Harris, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, also noted that many of the returning seabirds arrived later than expected and were underweight.

"Last year was a bad year," recalled Dr Bevan. "There were a lot of things that were strange.

"We had about four weeks of strong easterly winds before the breeding season started; that was really unprecedented.

"That may have affected sea temperatures, which in turn may have affected plankton growth, which would have had a knock-on effect on sandeel recruitment and growth," he suggested.

"So, the decline could simply be an aberration of last year, but on the other hand it could be an indication than puffins are in serious decline around these shores and we do not know why."
Dr Bevan and his team are hoping to publish initial results gathered by the GPS loggers in the autumn.

By Mark Kinver

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8126331.stm