Climate change is causing mass 'die-offs' in seabirds such as puffins

We need to ensure we have robust monitoring systems in place to document these depressing changes in bird numbers

Changes in seabird numbers are probably the best way to monitor the quality of the marine environment. And things are looking bad. In the past 50 years, the world population of marine birds has more than halved. What’s worse is that few people have noticed.

Puffins, guillemots, penguins and albatrosses are all in decline. How do we know this? There are three main ways of checking on numbers. First and best are long-term population studies: counts of individuals or pairs at their breeding colonies made in a systematic, rigorous way each year at established “study plots”. For instance, I have