MAINE MONITOR • August 17, 2024
Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late 1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, six miles off Pemaquid Point. Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992. This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins.