00:45 Climate Change Linked to Mass Puffin Die-Off in Bering Sea The birds are dying by the thousands in the Bering Sea region, and a new study claims climate change could be the cause.

At a Glance Dead seabirds, mostly tufted puffins, started washing up on Alaska's St. Paul Island in 2016.

Data shows that their deaths could be related to climate change.

"It's kind of terrifying," one researcher says. The first dead puffin washed up on the shores of St. Paul Island, a tiny outpost in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, on October 17, 2016.

Then there was another, and another and another. Over the next four months a group surveying the beaches of St. Paul counted 359 dead seabirds, most of them tufted puffins.

Now, researchers say, as many as 7,600 tufted puffins and 8,800 seabirds in all may have died in that part of the Bering Sea during a "massive mortality event," according to a paper published this week in the journal Plos One.

The numbers were startling - only six dead puffins had washed up on St. Paul in the previous decade .

“It was very apparent that something strange was happening. They just keep washing in and washing in,” Lauren Divine, director of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Ecosystem Conservation Office and of the study's authors, told the Washington Post. “Every person in our community knew something was wrong.”

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Divine and other volunteers collected, counted and tagged the dead sea birds that washed up on St. Paul from October 2016 to February 2017. Researchers then used a mathematical formula that took into account weather data and other factors to calculate that thousands of birds had likely died.

Some of the carcuses were sent for necroscopies, which showed they had unusually low levels of body fat and weak pectoral muscles. That led researchers to conclude the birds had starved.

“They literally didn’t have enough to eat and became weak to the point of death ,” Julia Parrish, an ecologist at the University of Washington and one of the study's researchers, told the Atlantic.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/deadpuffins.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/deadpuffins.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/deadpuffins.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551 800w" > Volunteers collected, counted and tagged dead sea birds, mostly puffins, that washed up on St. Paul Island from October 2016 to February 2017 (Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Ecosystem Conservation Office )

When the birds first started washing up , Parrish and others theorized that the puffins' diet was lacking in energy-rich food sources. The new research supports that claim. Typically, the birds feed on fish which in turn rely on plankton as their main nutritional source.

But both those food sources are becoming more scarce due to increased sea and atmospheric temperatures, as well as declining winter sea ice in the Bering Sea. Those factors are driving the puffins' food sources to find colder waters farther north.

Compounding the problem, the birds died during their annual molt, which zaps them of strength, and their weak pectoral muscles likely made it difficult for them to fly or catch fish underwater, the study said.

A similar die-off, also blamed on starvation, happened among puffin chicks in Maine.

Massive seabird die offs, known as "wrecks," also happened in Alaska in 2017 and 2018, according to the National Park Service. Those events were also blamed on starvation.

Experts say the dying seabirds are an indication of a massive ecosystem shift in the Bering Sea, caused by climate change.

“We are now just bracing for what is going to wash in next,” Divine told the Post. “It’s kind of terrifying.”