Related: Where to travel with your elementary school kidsĮven the street signs in Heimaey are puffin-themed Carrie Dykes / Lonely Planet In hopes of dodging what – to us – felt like an expensive, manufactured experience, we immediately booked our tickets to the land of fire and ice, in search of real magic in the wild, untamed landscape. That is, until Finn began to also bring up a trip to Disney, inspired by school friends. My husband and I were loosely talking about a family camping and road trip in Iceland, but nothing was set in stone. My 6-year-old son, Finn, had been obsessed with puffins for months, begging to go see the “clowns of the sea” in real life. The warmer the ocean gets, the more important it is to save young chicks, and the more wind up in trouble. Puffin population numbers have dropped over the years due to warming waters, which are not conducive to their diet needs and are uninhabitable for their usual fare. The islands are known as the puffin capital of the world and Puffling Patrol has been an annual custom for decades. The Westman Islands are islands formed by underwater volcanic action that took place 10-20 thousand years ago off the south coast of Iceland (only one island, Heimaey, is inhabited). Aron didn't want to miss a moment of this annual puffin ritual.Formed by underwater volcanos long ago, the Westman Islands are an important puffin breeding ground off the coast of Iceland © Carrie Dykes / Lonely Planet It was like Christmas morning when his dad Sindri woke him up just before midnight. This is a rescue effort that's been generations in the making - one that's led by the children of Heimaey, like seven-year-old Aron Sindrason. "It's not so easy to find a puffin, I guess," said one child. These youths show the two pufflings they've rescued. Many pufflings get confused and fly toward the lights of town instead, where they either starve or end up in the clutches of a hungry cat.Īnd that's when something called the Puffling Patrol - armed with headlamps and flashlights - scrambles into the inky black. But the lights from Heimaey's harbor have given the moon some competition. Instinct tells baby puffins to follow that moonlight out to sea. It happens after the sun dips into the Atlantic - and the moon rises high above. Just getting out of those burrows to begin their lives can be risky. I'm not sure that chick is going to make it." But they've been in short supply, Hansen says, because of rising ocean temperatures.Īt one burrow he noted, "This one is incubating a small chick. Baby puffins (called pufflings) eat tiny silver fish called sand eels. There is a chick underneath there."īut only about 55% of the burrows had an egg inside. While the hunting certainly doesn't help, Hansen says the puffins have larger issues - breeding problems for one.Ĭowan followed Hansen to the top of the sea cliffs while he inspected the puffin's burrows: "You can see underneath the wing here, it's hiding something under the wing. In fact, we found puffin as an appetizer at one of the island's restaurants. It's been going on since the Vikings settled the place. It's not all puffin hunting that's to blame - yes, that does happen. "If this continues, it's not going to end very well." "The species is still very abundant in the Atlantic, but when you have these long-term declines, then you start getting worried," he said.
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