> > From http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546138
>>
>> Disaster at sea: global warming hits UK birds
>> By Michael McCarthy Environment Editor
>> 30 July 2004
>>
>>
>> Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed this
>> summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by scientists
>> directly to global warming.
>>
>> The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several
>> seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the first
>> major impact of climate change on Britain.
>>
>> In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The Day
>> After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have led to the
>> mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine food chain - the
>> sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming shoals have hitherto
>> sustained larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds in their millions.
>>
>> In Orkney and Shetland, the sandeel stocks have been shrinking for
>> several years, and this summer they have disappeared: the result for
>> seabirds has been mass starvation. The figures for breeding failure, for
>> Shetland in particular, almost defy belief.
>>
>> More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in the
>> islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose results were
>> published this year; this summer the birds have produced almost no
>> young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland area manager for the Royal
>> Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
>>
>> Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland
>> seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the guillemots is
>> unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of great skuas were
>> recorded in Shetland in the same census; this year they have produced a
>> handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than 10 - while the arctic skuas
>> (1,120 pairs in the census) have failed to produce any surviving young.
>>
>> The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of Shetland
>> kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered complete failure",
>> said Mr Ellis.
>>
>> In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures are not
>> yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's warden on Orkney
>> mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds have raised any chicks at
>> all."
>>
>> The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are by no
>> means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example, will also have
>> suffered massive breeding failure but because they nest deep in burrows,
>> this is not immediately obvious.
>>
>> But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already clear - and
>> the link to climate change is being openly made by scientists. It is
>> believed that the microscopic plankton on which tiny sandeel larvae feed
>> are moving northwards as the sea water warms, leaving the baby fish with
>> nothing to feed on.
>>
>> This is being seen in the North Sea in particular, where the water
>> temperature has risen by 2C in the past 20 years, and where the whole
>> ecosystem is thought to be undergoing a "regime shift", or a fundamental
>> alteration in the interaction of its component species. "Think of the
>> North Sea as an engine, and plankton as the fuel driving it," said Euan
>> Dunn of the RSPB, one of the world's leading experts on the interaction
>> of fish and seabirds. "The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past
>> 20 years, as a result of climate change, that the whole engine is now
>> spluttering and starting to malfunction. All of the animals in the food
>> web above the plankton, first the sandeels, then the larger fish like
>> cod, and ultimately the seabirds, are starting to be affected."
>>
>> Research last year clearly showed that the higher the temperature, the
>> less sandeels could maintain their population level, said Dr Dunn. "The
>> young sandeels are simply not surviving."
>>
>> Although over-fishing of sandeels has caused breeding failures in the
>> past, the present situation could not be blamed on fishing, he said. The
> > Shetland sandeel fishery was catching so few fish that it was closed as
>> a precautionary measure earlier this year. "Climate change is a far more
>> likely explanation."
>>
>> The spectacular seabird populations of the Northern Isles have a double
>> importance. They are of great value scientifically, holding, for
>> example, the world's biggest populations of great skuas. And they are of
>> enormous value to Orkney and Shetland tourism, being the principal draw
>> for many visitors. The national and international significance of what
>> has happened is only just beginning to dawn on the wider political and
>> scientific community, but some leading figures are already taking it on
>> board.
> >
>> "This is an incredible event," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of
>> the Earth. "The catastrophe [of these] seabirds is just a foretaste of
>> what lies ahead.
>>
>> "It shows that climate change is happening now, [with] devastating
>> consequences here in Britain, and it shows that reducing the pollution
>> causing changes to the earth's climate should now be the global number
> > one political priority."