Bass Rock lies a few kilometres offshore from the idyllic Scottish town of North Berwick. Home to the largest colony of Northern gannets on the planet, it is one of the world’s wildlife wonders. A small cluster of nearby inhabited islands in the Firth of Forth – Craighleith, Fidra and Lamb – attract various other breeding seabird colonies from March to October each year. I travelled to the area to meet the team at the Scottish Seabird Centre, which has been protecting seabirds for more than 20 years, to learn more about one of the most charismatic seabirds in the region.

Atlantic puffins, the instantly-identifiable ‘clowns of the sea’, rely on the ocean for food. Pollution, climate change, disease and overfishing are just a few of the many challenges facing the species today. Listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as Endangered in Europe and Vulnerable worldwide, it is estimated that there are between 7.4 and 8.2 million mature individuals globally. Populations in Europe have decreased by 68% in the last 50 years, according to Birdlife data. There are a number of reasons for this decline.

Atlantic puffins live out in the open ocean for most of the year, returning to selected North Atlantic coastlines and islands to breed. In Scotland, puffins come ashore on the isles of May, Fidra, Craigleith, Handa, St Kilda, Orkney and Shetland, amongst other locations, from March to August, to gather at so-called puffinries, or nesting sites, which tend to be burrows on grass-covered clifftops. Around North Berwick they can be seen from April to July. Their range spans from the eastern coast of Canada and northern United States to the western coast of Europe and northern Russia. Iceland is home to an estimated 60% of the world’s puffin population.

The species’ main food source, sandeels, is under immense pressure. The small fish species is highly susceptible to changes in water temperature. With global warming causing sea temperatures to rise around the UK, as in other parts of the world, sandeel numbers are also declining. As a result, puffins are struggling to find enough food to feed their chicks. Overfishing is exacerbating the problem.

According to a recent study led by The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), reduced food accessibility and prolonged periods of stormy weather caused by climate change could see 68% reduction in puffin nesting sites in Western Europe by the end of the century unless urgent measures are taken. “These birds face double the challenges as they breed on land but rely on the sea for survival; by living across these two worlds, they are essential to both ecosystems and give us a glimpse into the health of wildlife in otherwise hard-to-monitor areas of the ocean – meaning their loss would impact countless other species and their conservation,” says Henry Häkkinen, ZSL Institute of Zoology post-doctoral fellow, who was involved in the study.