Fishing lifeline for seabirds

Industrial fishing for sandeels may be banned, handing some of the UK’S best-known seabirds a lifeline.

The small, eel-like fish are an important source of food for threatened birds such as puffins and kittiwakes, which are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species.

Kittiwake numbers have fallen by half since the 1960s and the traditionally strong colony of puffins on the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, is in decline.

Warming seas are reducing the sandeel population and industrial fishing adds further pressure, reducing the numbers available to the birds during the breeding season. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has launched a consultation on the pros and cons of introducing restrictions on netting the fish in English waters.