Warmer Seas Blamed for Rapid Decline of Scottish Puffin Colony. By Emily Dugan, London Independent, June 4, 2008. "Atlantic puffins, until recently one of the North Sea's rare wildlife success stories, are joining the ranks of dwindling birdlife after new data revealed their numbers on a crucial island colony are in sharp decline. Researchers on the Isle of May, home to the largest puffin colony in the North Sea, have found that after 40 years of steady increase the resident population has plummeted by almost a third in the past five years... Puffin numbers on the island have fallen from 69,300 pairs of the birds in 2003 to 41,000 pairs today... The exact cause of the dramatic fall in numbers remains a mystery, but [a leading researcher] believes the decline could be the result of climate change. He says that as the seas warm up, it is affecting the numbers of fish available for the puffins to eat."
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