On a recent visit to the Saltee Islands off the coast of Co Wexford, I was amazed to find that up to 200 people are landing on the larger island every day in the summer.
Four ferry boats ply the 20-minute crossing from Kilmore Quay a number of times each day. Passengers fan out across the island carrying cameras, mobile phones and picnic lunches but the majority are heading for the puffin colonies on the steep grassy slopes. These iconic seabirds are the main draw for most tourists, the majority of whom have never seen a seabird up close, except for a cheeky gull searching the rubbish bins in a city park.
When I first went to the Saltees more than 50 years ago, the islands were deserted, a derelict farmhouse standing among the bracken-covered fields, left behind by a farming family many years earlier. We were taken there on a small inshore fishing boat and landed on the beach in a little wooden rowboat that was sculled with a single oar by the fisherman Jack Devereux.
There were few visitors, mostly birdwatchers who were there to study migrant songbirds and some scientists monitoring the seabirds. Among these was the late Oscar Merne, one of Ireland’s most accomplished seabird experts. In the 1970s, Oscar was the joint author of a seminal book, Saltees: Islands of Birds and Legends, in which he estimated that there were about 830 pairs of puffins breeding there. These were idyllic days when one could wander freely on this beautiful island, which was and still is privately owned.
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But times have changed. Now it can be necessary to book a place on one of the ferries a month or more ahead. On arrival at the larger island, the crowds are excited to see hundreds of puffins standing outside their nesting burrows. Underground, each burrow contains a single fluffy black puffin chick, waiting patiently in the dark for the next load of fish to be delivered by one or other of its parents.
In the previous decade, the number of puffins on the larger island had dwindled considerably, due partially to predation by rats which enter the burrows at night feeding on puffin eggs and chicks.
But uncontrolled disturbance by visitors was also implicated. Many people unwittingly walked on the vulnerable burrows, causing them to collapse, or stayed too long in the nesting areas, preventing some of the adults from coming ashore with vital provisions for their offspring.
On my recent visit, I watched as some people photographed the adult puffins, at a range of little more than a metre, using the ubiquitous mobile phones. Some were even taking “selfies” with the birds or sitting on the burrows eating their picnics.
This behaviour is not confined to the Saltees. On Ireland’s Eye, just off Howth Harbour, I have watched an unrestrained dog cause mayhem in a large colony of ground-nesting cormorants while its owner looked on apparently unconcerned. On Dalkey Island in Dublin Bay, visitors walked unwittingly among nesting terns, rendering the eggs and chicks vulnerable to predation by the large gulls, that are constantly present.
Researchers on the Pacific coast of Mexico, studying human disturbance of the related burrow-nesting Cassin’s auklet, found that chicks in disturbed areas left the nests with lower body weights compared to chicks in the undisturbed areas. As the later survival of chicks at sea can be affected by their weights at fledging, many of these birds may not survive the first winter. They also reported that adult birds whose burrows were closer to paths more often abandoned their chicks and had lower breeding success compared to birds nesting further away from disturbance.
All this suggests that people should keep their distance if the welfare of the birds is a priority. However, this presents a paradox. For nature to flourish people need to engage with wild creatures. But if that engagement involves disturbance, then damage may be done.
Thankfully, the situation for puffins on the Saltee Islands has improved in recent years. Rangers, funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, are stationed on Great Saltee throughout the breeding season. They meet visitors coming off the boats, explaining to them what can be seen and asking for their co-operation in keeping a good distance from the nests. A programme of rat control has also had beneficial effects and the puffin population of the two islands is now estimated at about 1,100 pairs.
The late Oscar Merne would have been pleased to see this progress.
Richard Nairn is an ecologist and writer. His most recent book is Future Wild: Nature Restoration in Ireland
