Nature News from RSPB Scotland

EPISODE 25 Seabirds in Crisis and How You Can Help

• RSPB Scotland

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This episode is a deep dive into the crisis facing seabirds around Scotland's coasts. Stephen is joined at the seaside by Head of Species Paul Walton and Head of Marine Policy Helen McLachlan. They explain why Scotland is so important globally for seabirds and the threats they face.

Stephen also travels to RSPB Scotland nature reserves in Orkney, Fowlsheugh and Troup Head to hear what the impact of bird flu has been on birds like Gannets and Kittiwakes.

There's lots you can do to help and to find out more about what's happening to seabirds

Let the Scottish Government know what you think about closing the Sandeel fishery
https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/rspb-news-stories/hope-for-struggling-seabirds/

More about seabirds
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/natures-home-magazine/birds-and-wildlife-articles/features/enjoy-a-seabird-spectacular/

More about the Climate Crisis and what you can do
https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/campaigning/climate-change-effects-on-nature-and-wildlife/

Intro:

This is Nature News from RSPB Scotland.

Stephen Magee:

Hello and welcome to our podcast, Nature News from RSPB Scotland. I'm Stephen Magee. This is where we bring you stories about nature, from global news to the little things we're noticing every day, and this is a podcast for everyone who loves nature and wants to know what they can do to help it. We're keen to hear your nature news, whether it's the little moments you've experienced or your thoughts on the big issues affecting the planet. You can contact us on Twitter a RSPB Scotland or you can email us at podcas t. scotland@rspb. org. uk, and please subscribe and leave a review, because it helps other folk find us in the podcast jungle. We're at the seaside, specifically Musselburgh. It is, for now, sunny, although there are some threatening clouds in the distance, and I am joined by Head of Species Paul Walton .

Paul Walton:

Hi Stephen.

Stephen Magee:

An, Iand by Head of Marine Policy, Helen McClachlin. And we are here by the sea because we want to talk today about seabirds, that's, about t seabirds and why they are amazing, but also about the challenges they face and a lot of the things that we've touched on in previous podcasts before, but probably in a wee bit more depth. But before we do that, the name of the podcast is Nature News and the first thing we always do is our own nature news. I am going to go first. I was out in the Pentlands at the weekend and I was feeling a bit kind of sad about the seasons because I went through a wee woody bit and there were no Willow Warblers and no h chaffs and, the Cuckoos left ages ago, and then I had three Wheatears do a little sustained kind of two minute fly past along the edge of a dyke.

Stephen Magee:

So you know, that thing they do where they perch in a post, and then you run along a bit and they go a bit further in front of you.

Helen McLachlan:

They are getting ready to migrate.

Stephen Magee:

They are getting ready to migrate, but I felt like they had come for one last kind of like wave .

Richard Humpidge:

at the end of the summer.

Stephen Magee:

So I felt like I had my own personal Wheatear, so that was nice. What about you, Paul?

Paul Walton:

Oh well, so a few weeks ago I had a crisis in my allotment. Yeah, I did a real crisis, so I like hanging out in my allotment in Central Glasgow.

Stephen Magee:

It's a very nice allotment. Yeah, you've visited, haven't?

Paul Walton:

you.

Richard Humpidge:

I have seen a lot of people yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's looking pretty good just now and I've made a gigantic bug hotel.

Paul Walton:

In fact, it's more of a bug kind of mega metropolis really, and so hoping to attract, you know, mason bees, solitary bees, species like that. And I saw a little insect called the ruby tailed wasp oh wow, and its scientific name is crisis igniter, right, and this was like I mean, it's just a little tiny thing but it's a really big deal for me because that species is actually parasitic on mason bees.

Stephen Magee:

Wow.

Paul Walton:

So it's actually. That means I've made an ecosystem, that's fantastic you know, so it was really great. It's absolutely beautiful little thing. Once you get your eye in and see them, they're absolutely gorgeous. So yeah, a crisis wasp in my allotment Couldn't be better.

Stephen Magee:

Right. First I've ever seen in Glasgow Helen and no pressure. But does your nature ne ws contain any

Helen McLachlan:

Well.

Helen McLachlan:

I know I think I'm going to have to disappoint you. No, I'm going to be much more based than that I was. We were recently. We've just returned from holiday on the west coast and I did have the joys of witnessing not just a porpoise, which one would hope would be guaranteed on the west coast, but a lovely pod of dolphins feeding very actively on tasty fish, but not only that, in the middle of it a minky whale coming up in the midst of them. It was quite the evening and I have to say it did make for a more joyous end to our holiday because we'd had two weeks of fairly miserable July weather. So that was a delight.

Stephen Magee:

Well, the cetaceans make up for it. Well, sticking with our theme of the sea.

Richard Humpidge:

That means the worst. It does be a worst. Sorry about that, it does.

Stephen Magee:

So it's not a competitionaul Pbut what we are here to talk about today is seabirds. Maybe the best place to start actually is Scotland is an exceptional place for seabirds, and perhaps we take that for granted a little some of the time. What is it about Scotland that makes it so special for seabirds?

Paul Walton:

Yeah, you're dead right. Scotland is globally significant for its seabird populations, breeding seabird populations, and there's good logical reasons for that. So seabirds need three things really to survive. They need a safe place to breed, where the eggs and chicks don't get eaten by predators. They need a food supply close enough to those breeding sites they can feed their chicks. And because they're long-lived birds that breed very slowly like a full mackerel, they're 40, 50 years, probably more.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah a gannet and stuff.

Paul Walton:

Yeah, yeah, they really need adult survival to be high from year to year, so they need no additional causes of mortality. And if you get those three ingredients, then seabirds will thrive and will create globally significant populations. And in Scotland, for the first one, for the breeding sites, we have a lot of igneous volcanic rocks which are hard.

Paul Walton:

I've seen them getting flashbacks to like old-grade geography no really it makes sense because a lot of England is sedimentary rocks, soft rocks, far fewer islands. Just look at the map. Scotland is surrounded by islands and that's because the land doesn't erode so quickly. So we've got islands. And islands tend to be free from native mammal predators. That makes them safe breeding sites. So you get your seabird islands, so we've got breeding sites, first of all.

Paul Walton:

Second thing is we are surrounded by shallow seas. The North Sea is actually a really, really shallow sea. I remember once I was flying over the North Sea in a small airplane with an oceanographer and she said to me see that tanker down there. There was a tanker ship below us. She said if that was upended and its front end was stuck in the bottom of the sea, its back end would be sticking out the top, sticking out the surface.

Paul Walton:

You forget about that by the North Sea, but it's a shallow sea and also the continental shelf off the west is shallow sea as well. So what happens is the nutrients sink away from the surface continually, but every October along come the gales and effectively mix it back up. So again upwelling of nutrient-rich water comes up that feeds the plankton, that feeds the fish and that feeds the seabird. So we've got incredibly rich productive seas, so we've got the food, we've got the breeding sites and we had this kind of, you know, low adult mortality, because there was no additional sources of that mortality in any significant way for many centuries before really the industrial revolution and human activity really started to accelerate, and that's when things started to shift.

Stephen Magee:

We'll come to that and admit the challenges, but just give us a sense, helen, of in terms of the abundance of seabirds and the kind of proportion of the UK and world populations, like how pivotal are we and what are the key species.

Helen McLachlan:

Well, you know, we're internationally important here in the UK for a range of seabirds and in Scotland we've got 70% of those. So we've got 60% of UK seas, 70% of our internationally important seabirds. So things like 56% of great skewers here in Scotland, 20% of northern Gannet here in Scotland, the largest northern Gannet hub, just kind of just out of sight in the corner in the bas-roll 150,000 seabirds there. You know so really, really important and, as Paul said, it's because of the conditions here and you know it's just able to support that diversity.

Stephen Magee:

And it is, but unfortunately, as you touched on earlier, paul, that's not the story now, is it? You know abundance, although we still have a relative abundance and there's something absolutely there to fight for and protect the trend for our seabirds has been how bad has it been?

Helen McLachlan:

So if we look out to sea, as we're doing just now, we've got 15 indicators of what we would use to say is that healthy or not? 15 of them. Now, only four of those are currently green. The others are amber or red. The one for seabirds is the only one that is moving away from that target, so it's a declining situation. We've lost over half of our up to half of our seabirds since the 1980s.

Stephen Magee:

Now that is pretty dramatic and more recently, we should pause for a second because these are statistics that I hear quite often doing this and sometimes they kind of you get used to them, but half of our seabirds since the 80s, that's really chilly.

Paul Walton:

You always have to look at these statistics and metrics of biodiversity quite carefully, because biodiversity the clues in the name. It's incredibly diverse. But what this is is the agreed national breeding seabird indicator, which takes 11 seabird species that are common breeders in Scotland and monitors them annually. So they're monitored really, really carefully through the seabird monitoring programme, of which RSPB is a part. And it is that indicator of those 11 species which since 1986, between 1986 and 2019, declined by 49% and that is not in dispute. Everybody agrees and knows that's the case. It doesn't include all of our seabirds. So some important species like Gannets, which they've really well through a lot of the second part of the 20th century, that's not one of those species because it's too difficult to count them every single year because they're in such remote colonies. So it doesn't include everything, but it is a really good pointer to the general situation, which is we have really hammered our seabird populations in this country and, let's not forget, we have that global responsibility.

Stephen Magee:

Seabirds have been in the forefront of our minds this summer as they've yet again borne the brunt of the unprecedented bird flu outbreak that continues to kill thousands of birds around our coast. I've spent quite a bit of the summer out and about seeing what that means in reality and I wanted to bring you two conversations. In a while we will hear from Claire Smith with the very latest on what's happening with bird flu and seabirds. But first a conversation I had back near the start of the breeding season with site manager Richard Humpage at RSPB Scotland's amazing Troup Head Nature Reserve. It is June. It is a stunning day to be in a seabird colony. I am at Troup Head with Richard Humpage, the site manager. Holy Richard, this is a very nice patch. You have tell people a little bit about it.

Richard Humpidge:

It is a rather stunning place, isn't it? 300 foot high cliffs, absolutely stacked full of tens of thousands of seabirds, including Gannets the only place you can see Gannets in Scotland without getting on a boat first or flying about backwards and forwards below us. It's an absolutely stunning place. I love it here. Yeah, just to be clear for people.

Stephen Magee:

I mean, there are birds in every direction you look in. There are Gannets soaring around, there's the odd Fulmar where, whizzing by, there's Kittiwakes occasionally exploding up and a total cacophony of noise from down near the water. I've seen razor bills, gullumots, you've got a lot.

Richard Humpidge:

Yeah, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on here. There's even a few puffins as well in places, but yeah, loads and loads of stuff.

Stephen Magee:

Now, last year was a pretty difficult year here because of bird flu. Give people a sense of what kind of an impact that had on the birds at this reserve.

Richard Humpidge:

Well, just standing here now. This time last year we would only have heard Gannets, with the occasional gullumot in between odd Kittiwake the whereas now all you can hear is gullumots, Kittiwakes and the occasional Gannet, and it's really swapped things around, because we're standing quite close to the top of the cliff and that's where the club birds would be the young Gannets that come back to the colony looking for a mate and they make an awful lot of noise.

Stephen Magee:

These are called club birds because the idea is like they're in a disco hoping to meet a potential partner. Is that right?

Richard Humpidge:

Well, I think that's anthropomorphising it, but yes, I mean basically. Yeah, the club birds are teenagers that are coming back looking for a mate and they hang about in clubs on the edge of the colony.

Stephen Magee:

And last year you lost a big chunk of both your adult birds and the chicks. Give people a sense of how big that was.

Richard Humpidge:

Well, we reckon it varied a little bit from subsection to subsection on the cliff, but we reckon as a whole we lost probably 30% of the adult Gannets and we lost just over 20% of the chicks last year as well. So pretty staggering figures really.

Stephen Magee:

Now, tell a lot of people that would sound like a catastrophe, the kind of thing that might threaten the existence of the colony. You know, we put it in a perspective for us. How serious is that?

Richard Humpidge:

For a long lived species like Gannets. They might be breeding on these cliffs for 20, 25 years. Losing all their chicks in one year is not a disaster. I mean it's pretty bad but it's not a disaster. But losing 30, 35% of the adults is much, much more significant, because you know that's 30% of the chicks that we've lost for the next 20 years that those birds would have been breeding here. But you know, in the grand scheme of things, if it is just one year and thankfully so far this year there has been no sign of bird flu in the Gannets at all, in the grand scheme of things, if it's just one year, then they'll recover from it. If it happens again they might not. So we were really scared that it was going to come back this year and bite as hard or even harder than it did last year. But thankfully it doesn't seem to have done.

Stephen Magee:

And in general, you have to be hopeful, right working in this field.

Richard Humpidge:

Oh, I definitely, yeah. I mean, you don't get into conservation if you're a pessimist. It's very much the reign of the optimist here, because you have to hope that there's going to be a better future.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, well For them and for us, absolutely. And when a deer like this surrounded it, it just went past us, about 10 feet in front of us. Yeah, I think it's cautiously hopeful, yeah.

Richard Humpidge:

I think. So yeah, I mean, we're going to keep a very close eye on it and we're a little bit more relaxed now than we were two, three weeks ago, but we're still not going to take our eye off the ball. The chicks are just hatching now and, as I say, last year we had 90% of the chicks die. So you know, we'll be keeping a close eye on them as the season goes and progresses and we'll be back here again next year to see what's going on. So, by the magic of podcast time, travel.

Stephen Magee:

It is now mid-August and I am at Fowlsheugh. It's a few miles south of Stonehaven. It's an amazing seabird colony and I'm here with Claire Smith who looks after us. I'm here with Claire Smith who looks after us, and I'm here with Claire Smith who looks after us. I'm here with Claire Smith who looks after us. I'm here with Claire Smith who looks after us, but Claire, I was. We were last year, I think back at the beginning.

Intro:

Yeah, in February I think. So the seabirds were just gathering big rafts of seabirds out to see coming and visiting in the cliffs, just really at the start of the season.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and it was noisy and alive, and now mid-August, I mean it would normally be quieter anyway, right, anyway right.

Intro:

Yeah, a lot of birds would have left.

Stephen Magee:

A lot of birds have moved off but I'm afraid in front of us there's kind of a low, kind of slightly raised area of rocks that are above the tidaline and it's covered in little white dots and each one of those little white dots is a dead gull of some kind right.

Intro:

Yeah, mostly kitty-wakes,

Stephen Magee:

What has been happening here over the seabird season?

Intro:

So a really different picture in Scotland this year. So last year we saw bird flu, sadly all the way through the seabird season. This year people thought we'd maybe got away with it. We didn't start seeing dead birds until the end of June and that was actually kitty-wakes and gillimots washing up all along the East Coast of Scotland, mostly the Aberdeenshire coast initially, and then we started getting positive tests and birds. It's a really different picture because we've got a different dominant type of the virus this year, so it's a sort of a gull clade, so it's one that evolved in gulls.

Stephen Magee:

And for people who don't know, like which I didn't know before. I started talking about this.

Intro:

a clade is basically, it's a, it's a flavour of a virus, yeah, so really similar to when people were talking about COVID and we had the different variants. So they're just genetically slightly different so they behave slightly differently. And bird flu it means that they behave differently in different species. So this one came about from combining with some low pathogenic Avenin influenza in black-headed gulls. It came over from Europe when the black-headed gulls returned to breed spread up through England and kitty-wakes are a gull. So I'm really you know, sadly not surprised that they've been hit quite badly.

Stephen Magee:

I think the kitty-wakes has been, because I should say, as obviously we've heard from Richard about troop heads, I mean when I was there in June like things were looking pretty good for the kitty-wakes, and then you know, we know that like over the summer troop has been hitting the same

Stephen Magee:

other places have you know, and there's been really high mortality of both the kitty-wake adults and obviously the chicks as well. And I think you know, you don't, you don't. I would imagine you're one of the challenges of your job, right? Is you have to try and stay focused and scientific and evidence-based against it about all this. But I think the kitty-wakes are such charismatic, beautiful, gorgeous, you know, small gulls yeah yeah, so iridescent wings and just lovely and a little you know the little.

Stephen Magee:

You know white faces and it's really hard accepting that this is happening to them.

Intro:

No, absolutely, and especially when you've got that far through the breeding season. So you know, for people here who are monitoring the birds, you know seeing those chicks, seeing big chicks in the nest, you know that should be making it leave for the nest quite soon. And then seeing those dying on the nest, I think is really heartbreaking as well.

Stephen Magee:

So one of the things that occurs to me from what you're saying is we are and we use this word all the time about bird flu, but for a reason we're in an unprecedented bird flu or break, and that means that we are.

Stephen Magee:

Our response to it has to develop over time, and a key part of that is I mean, you're saying that we now understand that the reason it's affecting the gulls is because of the variant right. So a couple of things about that Thing one is, I suppose, when we first see it, like there must be a range of factors like you know, is it in a particular species? Because of you know, it's more colonial than others?

Stephen Magee:

or there's something about. You know, the nests are closer together. How are we finding out these things and how important is it to understand that level of detail?

Intro:

We're really only finding that out by numbers of dead birds that turn up. There is genetic sequencing that goes on, so every time a dead bird is collected and tested, then the animal and plant health agency fully sequence what they find, and so that's how they understand how the virus is changing and they understand what the dominant variants are. I guess the missing piece in that, though, is and we aren't doing any sort of proactive testing of healthy birds. So we don't understand, and we know what's happening in dead birds. We don't know enough about what's happening in live birds and how many other species might have been exposed but have done okay, or, if there's geographical variants, if birds are doing better in one part of the country or not. We only kind of know what we know from from dead birds, so that can be a bit limited, and it's further limited by the fact that you know again, all the tests have to go through one lab in the UK, and also, if you've got remote areas, it can be quite hard to get birds tested.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and there's also you always got to keep in mind with this stuff as well that although it is a low risk, there is a risk to human health from dead birds, which is why it's so important that people follow the device about you know, don't touch dead birds don't handle dead birds.

Stephen Magee:

You know, if you're in a place like, for example, if you were in a coastal place like this today where there might be dead birds, keep your dog in a lead, all that kind of stuff. But but the read across on that also is that every time we ask somebody who works for our SPB or any other agency or organization to go out into this environment and counter these birds, potentially handle them and collect them, you're asking them to take a risk and that has to be proportionate.

Intro:

Yeah, and we've absolutely had to weigh that that up. You know, we we work really closely with government in terms of different types of testing, so swabbing as well as collecting dead birds and we absolutely weigh that up and, you know, take appropriate kind of health and safety considerations.

Stephen Magee:

You will now be thinking beyond the seabird season. What are we looking for next? What are our hopes and fears? I suppose?

Intro:

Yeah. So because I started this job in November. So I now am at the point where I can sort of see, you know, the full year through and before I was starting last year but was keeping an eye on bird flu like it was quieter in September and October and it is kind of what we call the shoulder season in birds. So you know, you've got the, you know gannets and things will still be fledging into September and still be leaving and and seabirds will be in, you know big groups out at sea, but it's before the big numbers of geese are really building up. So last year we didn't see impacts in geese until November time.

Intro:

Because birds are moving around. You know birds that arrive in the UK might bring another dominant variant with them or they might not, and so there's a lot of there's a real interplay between the kind of virology and what's happened with the virus and then the ecology of birds and how they move around. And again, that's where it's interesting to think about Covid, because one of the big measures in Covid was there was kind of an all-stop on people moving around, whether that was locally or internationally or nationally, and obviously you can't do that in birds. So that's the bit that's very, very unpredictable in terms of what's happening. The other thing that happens in autumn is obviously getting a lot of game birds released. So in Scotland just in the last few weeks we've had three big outbreaks in pheasant rearing premises. A lot of birds will already be released.

Stephen Magee:

That's another kind of thing in the pot in terms of, you know, mixing up the genetics where where game birds will be encountering wild birds and things as well, is it just know that, in the same way as a conservation organisation, we've had to factor in issues that are present the whole time, like the impact of human disturbance, climate change, habitat loss? Is it the unfortunate position that, for the foreseeable future, bird flu is just part of that mix of things that we will always have to be?

Intro:

considering, I think, for the medium term. Yeah, it could be and it's something certainly in RSPB internally we're thinking about. You know, how do we carry on our really important conservation work and keep our staff? You know, because we don't want to be on an all-stop, because we can't. You know, bird flu isn't something that we. We focus on bird flu and we just stop all the other stuff. Bird flu is an additional threat to these birds. You know kitty rates were already red listed, had big declines. So it really needs to be a wake-up call to step up all the other stuff. So we need to do everything we can that the colonies that aren't impacted, you know, to prevent disturbance, to remove predators, that kind of stuff, to make sure they get as many chicks away as possible. But it is. It's definitely an extra thing for RSPB and all conservation organisations to kind of to think of. And an extra time, extra thing staff have to spend time on so that's kind of like.

Stephen Magee:

The latest from the front line is it well yeah, paul. When we were thinking about the best and worst-case scenarios for this year for the seabird season, what do you think we've seen in reality?

Paul Walton:

and we must remember that this highly pathogenic bird flu that we've got is a new thing, originated in poultry in the Far East and it's really unpredictable. Okay, so last year we had massive impact on breeding gannets, on great skeuas, on some of the terns. This year most of the seabirds in this country. The breeding season seem to have got away with it, but there's been an uptick more recently and we have seen I think at least 10% of the UK population of black-headed gulls is dead. We've seen increasing numbers of kitty wakes, which is really worrying because that's a species that's quite a specialist feeder, entirely marine, and it's been hit in Norway really, really seriously. So well, over 10,000 birds dead in Norway. So it's not over and the future course of it is unpredictable.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and your right to point as well. It is also a global phenomenon, both in its origin and these birds, you know, have amazing life cycles where they go all kinds of places and we don't necessarily always have insight into what happens to them when they're not, you know, close to our shores. There's another worry, helen, in terms of how we've reacted to this, you know, I mean in the widest sense, you know, government society organisations like ours. What kind of score would you give us for dealing with HPAI? What are the good things we've done and where are we missing?

Helen McLachlan:

Well, I think there was an initial response and, paul, you're probably better to say than me than where are we quick enough, where are we effective enough? I think it was a patchy kind of response that we got what we've said all along. This is one thing on top of an already already highly pressured group of birds. I mean sea birds are declining faster than any other bird group across the globe. You know they really need all the help that we can get. So when we come back to what do they need? Those safe places, those plentiful food supplies? You know those are the things that we need to see and then HPAI hits them. So we need super fast response to that. But also we need to get on and do the stuff that we can do.

Helen McLachlan:

So we need to address by catch of sea birds and fishing gear around our waters. I mean, here in Scotland, you know, on a daily basis the estimate is 25 fulmers every day is caught in long-line gear in in Scottish waters. Now that's pretty horrific. It's more horrific because it's something we can actually do something about. We know the technology can be put out on vessels to address that and minimize that mortality. So we need to address places, safe places to breed.

Helen McLachlan:

You know, looking across Scotland, we've had a piece of work recently done to assess just how effective the protected areas are for sea birds, for example, and less than 50% of those are in favourable condition. Now that number needs to increase. We need to be better about how we manage our fisheries. We need to be better about how we manage our busy seas and you know we've got the nature and climate crisis whereby we need to see a decarbonisation of our energy system and that will require both onshore and offshore wind. But that needs to have sea birds and nature in general, you know, really front loaded in it, not leaving it to the last minute and then going, oh dear. I think we're going to impact sea birds. Front load those decisions and take nature into account when we address that.

Stephen Magee:

Now we'll come back at the end to a little bit more about that and also talking about what people as individuals can do to hopefully help make those kind of right choices get made in the right places. Just coming back to the to the bird flu thing specifically, paul, I suppose one way of thinking about this actually is you're absolutely right to say this is an unprecedented and unpredictable event, and while there's obviously frustration that you know government agencies have occasionally been telling people to do different things in different places, or, you know, different institutions have been approaching, say, the collection of carcasses differently at the end of the day, we have to keep in mind that we are dealing with an unprecedented crisis and we will have to learn as we go along, and maybe we should be a little bit easier on ourselves about that.

Paul Walton:

I think that that's right actually, and I think it is a really difficult one to respond to, and that's been evident in our.

Paul Walton:

You know, we've been working really closely more recently with some of the government agencies, like Nature Scotland, marine Scotland on this, and I think we should say that Scottish government set up a task force to bring it together Absolutely, which we were asking for for a year and a half, and so I mean this is not a blame game, okay, but what Helen says is really important that we know what we need to do to help to build resilience in our seabird populations generally to this, to to to a highly pathogenic avian influenza, but also to all the other pressures, and that's where we need to to focus.

Paul Walton:

And I have to say that on that critical food supply issue, the government is currently consulting on the feature of sandeel fishing in Scottish waters. Sandeel is an ecologically kind of a pivotal species and people can respond to that and they can say we think it should end, and that consultation is a really big step in the right direction. So it isn't a blame game but it is massively challenging and of course, as RSPB, we want to see the very best response possible.

Stephen Magee:

The sandeel thing we will come back to in a second, but actually one of the places that I'd been while I've been doing some of the reporting that I've been doing on bird flu was Orkney, and when it comes to sandioles and the material impact of that, that's a pretty good place to go to understand it and all the other challenges that are facing seabirds. So a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to Maric Head, our reserve on mainland Orkney, and sit down with Sarah Sankey and talk about what her experience of living and working in Orkney with seabirds has been. While I'm on my travels, I am at Maric Head in Orkney. It is late in the seabird season, but this this remains an amazing place to visit. Right there's a few kind of juvenile kittyweaks around, some other kittyweaks, loads of fulmars, some gannets offshore, a seal by a huge kind of array of cliffs and a really important place for breeding seabirds. And I have got Sarah Sankey with me, who is the area operations manager for Orkney. Tell me a bit about Marwick Head.

Sarah Sankey:

Yeah, Marwick Head is an RSPB reserve and is the biggest seabird colony on the Orkney mainland.

Stephen Magee:

We are here now what, towards the end of July, there has been some evidence of HPI bird flu turning up here by some dead kittyweaks, I think. Yeah, indeed we have had some cases up here and have you been struck by bird flu here in the past as well?

Sarah Sankey:

Yeah, absolutely so. Last year was a bad year and this comes on top of a pretty catastrophic turn of the century for seabirds up here.

Stephen Magee:

That's really why I wanted to come to MArwick Head, because, whilst the bird flu story is is that it sometimes feels overwhelming and you just can't see past it. Actually, with seabirds, it's just, it is part of the story and what's been happening here is just as worrying, if not more, worrying. Tell me a bit about the trends, because Orkney's actually maybe first of all, it tells about why Orkney's so important for seabirds and how big a deal it is.

Sarah Sankey:

Yeah, so the islands of Orkney have got well, had just over 10 percent of all the UK's breeding seabirds in the year 2000. The last sort of big census count. That has been completed, so really important place for breeding seabirds. Alongside Shetland, areas of the north coast of Scotland and up into Iceland. These birds have been experiencing a devastating failure of breeding since the year 2000 basically.

Stephen Magee:

So like to pick a species, for example kittyweaks. They're probably just really crashed quite suddenly.

Sarah Sankey:

Yeah, seabirds are long lived, so it takes quite a lot of years of a failure of breeding to start having an impact on the numbers. But since the year 2000 we've had almost total breeding failure for a considerable number of years. And what do we know about what's causing that? So it's climate change driven, so changes in the sea. So there's completely different plankton species now, so different temperatures in the sea, completely different plankton species. They bloom at a different time, there's less of them and they have less fat in them, so they can't support the sand eels. Sand eels are, then, the main source of food for the birds. I remember like the first time we started noticing this, we had a year where birds were just bringing in pipefish, totally indigestible for the birds yeah, they're those kind of long, skinny, borny looking kind of fish, yeah, sort of elongated sort of seahorse type things that you just found dead birds, dead chicks with scatterings of pipefish, dead chicks with pipefish sticking out their mouths, you know, really upsetting scene.

Sarah Sankey:

So that many years of breeding failure until, ironically, a couple of years before the avian influenza hit, you know, almost like a complete failure of the birds to to rear any young. And the seabird tracking data we've been collecting has reflected the change in the sea. So instead of the birds feeding within two or three miles of their breeding ground, they've been heading off towards Norway in search of food and obviously heading off those long distances they can't actually support chicks. The chicks slow to grow if they, if they actually managed to beat starvation. And then with the birds out at sea for so long, there's a greater risk of predation when the, when the adults are away.

Stephen Magee:

It's just multiple stresses, isn't it? That's the thing about a lot of these things when it comes to birds or any other kind of wildlife. It's like.

Sarah Sankey:

It's like stress heaped on stress, heaped on stress, and the cumulative effect can just push something, yeah, in a really catastrophic position yeah, so you know, in Orkney I was saying about 10% of the UK's breeding birds alone, shetland, you know, probably has even more seabirds, exactly the same situation happening. So so basically, in the area that this climate change has really been affected, huge losses in birds we're talking like since the turn of century we've lost about nine tenths of our kitty wakes off the cliffs.

Stephen Magee:

And you know we're looking out here at this vast expanse of, you know, the North Atlantic, which is a gateway to the rest of the North Atlantic right, and these birds live these incredibly complex lives in this habitat. And something as seemingly obscure as the fat content of a different species of plankton can set off a chain reaction that totally changes not just what's happening with these birds but the entire identity of this place, because the kitty weeks and the sound of the kitty weeks and the smell of the kitty weeks is as much part of Marwick head as the thrift and the cliffs and everything else.

Sarah Sankey:

Yeah, absolutely, and you know, away from the cliffs, the place used to be swarmed with arctic turns breeding. Now you have like a few scattered colonies left, really, and a lot of them, you know, quite often fail to breed.

Stephen Magee:

I mean, how do you, how do you like, cope with that sense of loss?

Sarah Sankey:

I mean it's ironic them then getting a disease just when we're getting young birds on the cliff. I mean it's lovely that we're sitting here now and we can see young fledged kitty weeks.

Stephen Magee:

There are some juvenile kittiwakes here, so it's not a totally hopeless story, but nevertheless.

Sarah Sankey:

Because we have had years where the cliffs are absolutely nothing, right at the time when you should be seeing the birds fledging, just empty cliffs, and there has to be something pretty massive we're doing to create such a change in something as huge as this sea.

Stephen Magee:

It is, and my worry about it, you know, talking to people about seabirds for this podcast is that, like I'm not a climatologist, right, and neither am I an oceanographer or whatever but that habitat takes a long time to change, right, you know, the inputs that you put into it take time to show themselves later on, and if you look at some of this stuff about, like, the sea surface temperature data from this summer and you think about, is the amount of time it's taken to drive these changes? What are we yet to see? I mean, are you still hopeful?

Sarah Sankey:

I think if you'd asked me a few years ago. The predictions are at the moment that this is going to get worse. So all that's happening is temperatures are going up. You know we're not reducing the fossil fuels consumption enough to reduce the CO2 levels, to reverse this sort of thing, but there are glimmers of hope. So the last few years, you know, they have actually managed to breed. They have been feeding locally and have managed to produce young. You've got Gannets here now and we've got Gannets here now. So you know, a long time ago you wouldn't have seen any filmers on the cliff of Orkney.

Sarah Sankey:

So there's, you know, different effects, different species. It's the species that rely on sand eels here that have really been struggling with the climate change. So that's, you know, kitty wakes, the Auks like Gilomots, Puffins, Razorbills, Arctic terns, and then the species that depend on them, so Arctic Skua the Bonxies you know been hit particularly hard, you know, through the last couple of years. I mean, I think we've got it in our hands to do something about it.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and do you know what? At least today we've seen some juvenile kittiwakes. That at least is something positive, particularly right.

Sarah Sankey:

I think if we've still got birds on the cliff and they're still breeding, then there's hope that we can do something about it to change the situation. I think the hope goes when they're no longer breeding.

Stephen Magee:

It was a real paradox that afternoon in Orkney because you were somewhere beautiful and there were juvenile kitty wakes cutting about kind of mewing away, and it was sunny and it was lovely, but you oh, just talking to Sarah, there's obviously this huge sense of absence, right of a thing that you can't you know, you don't know what you had if you didn't see it, and I didn't, you know I'd never. I haven't seen Marik head in its full glory before. Like the kittiwake population declined. But it's part of that wider system, like anything else with seabirds. It's part of that wider system. Helen, just just again, really quickly remind us what those main causal factors are behind those declines of seabirds.

Helen McLachlan:

So food is absolutely fundamental. So what that you know, the food availability for them, sand deals, in particular for birds like kittywakes, puffins, that are reliant on those, that's a fundamental safe places to breed, to be. So looking at how we make sure that those are protected is going to be really, really key. And mortality mortality, you know, human induced mortality in things like fisheries and in offshore development is in their own place. Yeah, yeah, birds literally getting hit by turbines and all that kind of stuff.

Stephen Magee:

So how many of those things, paul, how many of those things are under human control?

Paul Walton:

Well, the food supply is heavily influenced by climate change. There's no doubt about that. Climate change has impacted the fundamentals of marine food chains around Scotland and indeed around the world. So we can't switch off climate change just like that tomorrow. But what we can do by, for example, having a national programme of island restoration and biosecurity and what I mean by that is removing invasive non-native mammals from seabird breeding islands and then making sure they don't reinvade again that's the biosecurity bit. We need a programme of that right across the Scottish archipelago, because we know there are dozens and dozens of islands that used to be important seabird breeding sites but aren't anymore now if we but, crucially, just as people understand, we have demonstrated this is possible in all kinds of places both here,

Stephen Magee:

in the UK you know there are loads of examples of where we've got. This is a practical action. We can.

Paul Walton:

The key island of Canna in the early part of this century National Trust for Scotland. We are part of a partnership with them cleared of rats, and seabirds are coming back there. The Shiant Islands RSPB led that one and the storm petrels are back breeding there first time in living memory. So we know we can do this stuff. It is quite expensive, it's not easy, okay, but we can do it.

Paul Walton:

You need to do it all the way, right really you need to see them through to completion that is critical there have been mistakes made in the past not by RSPB, I might add, but not by some sometimes.

Paul Walton:

But yeah, I really think that if we can maximize breeding opportunities, then the birds will be able to make best use of the food that is available in a kind of unpredictable future. So that's one thing we can do. We can put monitoring on to those fishing vessels, the long liners that Helen was talking about there. We don't know really how many seabirds are being killed by these things. We start to start to monitor them. But then we know that we can work with fishing industries to find solutions because the albatross task force of birdlife international, the big global partnership of which we are we are apart, is working and succeeding, for albatross is elsewhere in the world. So we can work with industries to make this sort of stuff work and we can plan development giving proper consideration to nature. And I think if we do this sort of thing, I think we know how to reverse this.

Stephen Magee:

But it does take political will and it will take investment and Helen, it is your dejo right to talk to people about this and talk to. How would you characterize the response you get when you raise these issues?

Helen McLachlan:

I think it's a difficult one, because whoever you're talking to has got to weigh up not only our concerns for seabirds, but concerns across their portfolio of, you know, competing interests because these seas are not just a resource for seabirds, these are resources absolutely absolutely, and so you know, for example, the Sandeel consultation that Paul mentioned earlier, I mean that's a great initiative that we you know, we've seen nature's, we've seen the Scottish government come forward with, and sandeels are vitally important.

Helen McLachlan:

As you know, there are real keystone species in the ecosystem, not just for seabirds but for other fish who then go on to support commercial fisheries. They're important for seals, whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc. So, you know, really vital and it's it's, you know, something that everybody should be concerned about and support. So but but you know, I suppose there is a speed at which these things move which is not the one that we would like to see it at. You know it needs to be action at pace. You know this is an urgency, this is the house burning kind of scenario that we need to see and, as you know, paul talks about the, the seabird bycatch. So you know, not only should we be monitoring, but we know that actually, with some simple modifications to the way that fishermen are using their gear, you could be cutting out that that bycatch and mortality of seabirds.

Paul Walton:

And they don't want by no, they don't. The point is that moving towards a healthy marine environment is not. Environmentalists are standing here against communities. The fishing industry needs a healthy marine environment. We have to really depoliticize this issue and be very clear-eyed about it that this sort of an environmental enhancement that we are seeking. I mean seabirds are the top predators in the marine ecosystems. They are like canary in the coal mine. If seabirds are in trouble, the marine ecosystem is in a bad state and that is bad for us all. Okay, this isn't us against them, and I think people in government are beginning to really understand that and realize that and we are seeing seeds of some real cooperation beginning now unless you happen to be the cabinet secretary for the environment, and if you're listening.

Stephen Magee:

First of all, thank you for listening and please do listen to Paul and Helen, and although I'm sure you're familiar with what they've been saying, but for the rest of us, right, as lesser mortals, so obviously you can fill out the consultation of sandals and make your opinion known about that, and I will put the details for how to do that in the show notes or, if you have a look at any of the RSPB social accounts, we'll find ways to do that right. What else can people do to help seabirds? I suppose one thing is you know we've talked about climate change, you know we all need to think about that and and it doesn't just help seabirds it helps address the climate and nature crisis more widely. But that is a practical thing we can do as individuals, right?

Paul Walton:

I think being conscious of it is a really important thing. I think everyone it is gonna have to really take a bit of responsibility, and we have noticed that. Myself, I've really going to change my personal behavior. Well, I'm in my family and I think I think many people that I know are doing that.

Helen McLachlan:

Yeah, absolutely, and you know it takes. It takes a bit of bravery to do that, to to maybe challenge friends and family about some of their behaviors. And do we really need to? You know, do certain things. We do all need to take responsibility and have a bit of behavior change.

Helen McLachlan:

But you know, for example, you could be talking, you could, if you want to be active, you could write to your energy providers and say you know, fully support decarbonization of the energy sector. Are you taking nature into account right at the beginning of this process? Likewise with government, you know the people who lease the seabed out, they should be considering it right at that stage, not right at the end of the of the process, where you end up with a developer in a tricky situation trying to develop somewhere, that is, you know, in the middle of a seabird protected area, for example. So you know things like that. If people want to be a bit more active, want to challenge their energy providers, their local government MPs, you know, are you supporting actions that will lead to good things for not just seabirds but for the wider nature and climate crisis?

Stephen Magee:

and I'll put some more links in the show notes as well that help people with that. When we began talking about seabirds, one of the things I Was saying was you know, maybe you get a bit used to seeing these things in your doorstep, right, you know, I'm very lucky to grow up, you know I, you know variously either side of the Firth or fourth right, having the bass rock that I love me on my doorstep, I thought I just get as a kid I thought, like everybody's, why, you'll see, trip would be like, you know, one of the world's biggest seabird colonies, right, you know, kind of spoilt. But I suppose was when we're talking about the scale of declines we're talking about we have to contemplate that if we don't act Like this apparently invincible abundance, Could go.

Paul Walton:

It's under a real threat. There's no, there's no doubt about it. We're not so scare mongering here, but I would actually say the the the last thing that people can do is to Enjoy nature is is to make an effort To make sure that you put yourself in contact with nature. If you, if you're walking a route and you think, well, one takes me through a park and another is just along through buildings, just try to get that, go to the park. If you're near the coast, just try and get a walk along a beach or a shorefront and just look out to sea and Try and get yourself tuned into to these birds.

Paul Walton:

If there any Listeners who haven't quite started to do that yet it really, I think, can transform your life actually. I think it is so good personally, for your personal health and your personal well-being. The richness of nature is massive and it is still there. So what we're not trying to say is that all it's all completely doomed, there's nothing there. But the most important thing is that we renew those connections with nature, I think for everybody, because then, of course, and People are gonna start considering nature and everything that they do, from the top politicians, the cabinet secretary's right down to everyone who's working on the ground.

Stephen Magee:

Absolutely Well. Thank you both for making a time to come to the beach my pleasure.

Helen McLachlan:

My happiest place Absolutely.

Stephen Magee:

I'll put a bunch of stuff in the show notes about things that people can do to help and take action as well. I agree with Paul, like you know. You know I've I feel you know when I'm doing this stuff and I'm thinking about this stuff, my view in it is completely changed by looking a kitty wake in the eye right you know it makes me feel differently, but it makes my motivation.

Stephen Magee:

You know like we go through the roof right for wanting to do things about this, so absolutely go do that if you get the chance. Thank you for listening. In the meantime, do please, if you have enjoyed the podcast, leave us a review, wherever you've got it. Please tell somebody about it if you've enjoyed it and pass it on, because you know Word of mouth is a great gift to us and do let us know what you think and what you want us to cover. You can get us on Twitter at RSPB Scotland, or you can email us at podcast dot scotland, at rspborg Dot UK. I think the next podcast will be a bit more orkney stuff. I'm looking specifically at the Orkney Native wildlife project. It's a fascinating thing and all to do with, you know, a lot of similar issues to a biodiversity and human action, but more of that later. In the meantime, it is a goodbye from all of us at the beach and thank you for listening. Goodbye.

Paul Walton:

Goodbye, thanks, stephen.

Stephen Magee:

Bye, thank you.

Sarah Sankey:

You.