The gulf, cupped between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, is heating up faster than nearly every other ocean system on Earth. For cold-water sea life, the temperatures are their wildfire. Over the last decade, warmer waters have slammed into the Gulf of Maine as forcefully as a hurricane. The causes included plastic trash, oil, gas, and chemical industry pollution, agricultural runoff, overfishing and fishing gear, commercial coastal development, military operations, bright lights, power lines, and water warmed by climate change’s heat-trapping gases from fossil fuel emissions. Amid his efforts, the world’s seabird populations were in the process of dropping 70 per cent from 1950 to 2010. In retrospect, 21st-century human threats were already building on a global scale. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region / Flickrīack in our first interview, Kress thought the biggest threat to his work was that gulls might outfox him to retake the islands. The Puffin Project also helped to revive other bird species, including the tern. Kress’s methods of translocating chicks and using decoys, mirrors, and taped calls for social attraction helped revive and relocate more than 130 of the world’s approximately 350 seabird species in more than 40 countries from mortal dangers such as volcanoes, oil spills, and other animals. The project is iconic in the world of conservation for righting wrongs of the 19th and 20th centuries. The project has also revived tern populations and cousins of the puffin - common murres and razorbills. Project Puffin spread to other islands, resulting today in 1,300 breeding pairs of puffins across islands in the Gulf of Maine. In 2019, Eastern Egg Rock hit a record 188 pairs of puffins. Puffins began returning in 1977 and started breeding in 1981. He used decoys and mirrors to create the illusion that the rock was prime puffin real estate.
He hoped that when it was time to breed two or three years later, his birds would select Eastern Egg Rock instead of Newfoundland as their home. Fish and Wildlife experts brought gulls under control, Kress and colleagues raised puffin chicks in makeshift burrows until they hopped into the ocean. In 1973, he began years of bringing hundreds of puffin chicks down from Newfoundland. “As a scientist, your reasons for research have to go deeper than that.
In my first interview with Kress in 1986 for Newsday, he deadpanned that his interest in puffins had little to do with the bird’s beauty.
This past year, with so much nest failure and so few chicks to protect, I heard the lapping ocean a football field away. Even in the blind, the cacophony of birds swirling about obliterated all other sounds. Until this past summer, every walk to a bird blind meant going through a gauntlet of angry, dive-bombing birds pecking at my head, pooping on my shoulders, and screeching at a deafening pitch as I passed by their chicks darting at my feet. I began visiting these islands 35 years ago.
As other climate war zones smoulder with wildfire embers, are strewn with flattened homes, or marked by bleached coral, the signature of conflict on a seabird island in the Gulf of Maine is a maddening quietude. Along the boulders, researchers pointed out dead puffin chicks. In the grass were the remains of Arctic terns, common terns, and roseate terns. I stepped onto the battlefield of climate change, sidestepping carcass after carcass. This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
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