MOUNT DESERT ISLANDER • September 20, 2021
This past year was particularly bad for the young Atlantic puffins that nest on Maine’s coastal islands. For the last 17 years, an average of 65 percent of puffin chicks would survive the season and leave the state’s seabird colonies. Those figures plummeted in 2021. This season, an average of 25 percent of puffin pairs were able to raise chicks. Seal Island had 53 percent; Petit Manan was about 10 percent; Matinicus Rock was 34 percent; and Machias Seal Island was 2 percent. Biologists say two main factors contributed to the dismal year. One is that the warming gulf has made it harder for puffins and other seabirds to find the fish they feed their young. The second was this year’s large storms around the time seabird chicks start to hatch. A lot of chicks died from exposure.