One of the world’s largest programs to eradicate multiple predators and pests has started to restore the island and its once vast nesting colonies to their former glory.
Their ‘island naïveté’ means these seabirds are easy pickings when mice attack.
USFWS - Pacific Region/Flickr
On a small, remote island in the Pacific Ocean, an unlikely predator feasts on the world’s largest albatross colony. Researchers are trying to figure out how to stop these murderous mice.
Puffins and many other seabirds rely on sandeels as a food source.
Arnoud Quanjer/Shutterstock
Many seabird colonies around UK coastlines struggle to breed because the sandeels they feed on have been overfished. The upcoming closure of sandeel fisheries will be good news for marine wildlife.
Muttonbird ‘wrecks’ are becoming more common. Despite speculation about many possible causes, the evidence points to changes in the Arctic ocean ecosystem from where the birds migrate to Australia.
A flock of puffins on a cliff in Northumberland, England.
Riska Parakeet/Shutterstock
Craig Stevens, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
Building offshore wind farms is complex and expensive. But with plenty of wind coming in from the sea, New Zealand could harness the renewable resource as it aims to decarbonise the energy sector.
Scientists have identified a condition they call plasticosis, caused by ingesting plastic waste, in flesh-footed shearwaters.
Patrick Kavanagh/Wikipedia
Macquarie Island isn’t just a windswept rock halfway to Antarctica. It’s a globally unique home to dozens of bird and marine mammal species, hence the government’s plans to give it greater protection.
Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008.
David Rothstein
Pam Longobardi collects and documents ocean plastic waste and transforms it into public art and photography. Her work makes statements about consumption, globalism and conservation.
Invasive rats can fundamentally alter the functioning of surrounding marine ecosystems.
Bluerain/Shutterstock
Sea lions, otters and birds were some of the many wildlife species that were hit hard by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Oil spills like these expose the wildlife to new contaminants and can be fatal.
(AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)
ToxChips study the changes in the DNA of animals exposed to contaminants, like those found in oil spills.
A life reconstruction of one of the largest penguins that ever lived, Kumimanu biceae.
Illustration by Mark Witton (used with permission, all other rights reserved)