Livestock

• But puffin populations are in decline, largely due to their struggle to catch enough of these shiny fish: sandeels.
• Sandeels have been industrially fished on an industrial scale since the 1950s, not for human consumption but to make fishmeal.
• This fishing ban is a start but, with the added pressures of climate change, more is needed to save Britain’s seabirds.

The significance of sandeels

• Sandeels are also a favourite food for seabirds such as surface-feeding gulls and terns, and deep-diving auk species including puffins, razorbills and guillemots.
• As well as falling foul of marine predators, sandeels are caught by humans, largely to be used as feed for farmed fish, such as salmon, or livestock.
• But the UK government has not allowed British vessels to fish for sandeels since 2021.

• Relationships between the closure of sandeel area 4 and the breeding success of other sandeel-reliant seabirds around northern England and Scotland have not been obvious.
• This is potentially due to differences in foraging ranges and diving abilities between different seabirds.

Climate drivers

• Although fisheries could exacerbate declines in some seabird species, changing environmental conditions have larger impacts.
• This change might have detrimental knock-on effects on the seabirds that feed sandeels to their chicks during their summer breeding seasons.
• Climate change, which has already given rise to a warmer North Sea, is a main driver of sandeel declines.
• Many of these declines have been linked to the influence of climate change on the availability of their prey.

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Ruth Dunn has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

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