Bass Rock: Visiting the Scottish island on the front line battling a declining sea bird population

Bass Island enjoys special EU protections which have helped the gannet population to thrive, but the water around it does not - that may be about to change

Tom bawden Environment Editor 

Tuesday 29 September 2015 18:32 BST

On a giant lump of volcanic rock off the east coast of Scotland a dozen fledgling gannets prepare to walk the plank.

They are trapped behind the ruined castle battlements on Bass Rock - home to 150,000 gannets – and find themselves in a life-or-death situation.

They won’t be able to survive for much more than a day without food and the clock is ticking for them to fly over the battlement to the sea 200ft below and go fishing.

But they have never flown and even under less pressing conditions one in twenty fledglings die from their first flight.

Conservationists have helped them out by providing a plank laid from the foot of the battlement to the top. “Walking up the gangplank seems somehow appropriate,” says John Hunt, of the Scottish Sea Bird centre..

But while these hardy gannets will hopefully thrive, other Scottish seabirds will need more than a plank of wood if they are to have a future.

Scotland’s sea bird population has halved since 2000, with much greater declines among some species. Over the past two decades, Arctic terns have declined by 72 per cent, Arctic Skuas are down by 80 per cent and kittiwakes by 68 per cent. Puffins, razor bills and guillemots are also under pressure.

Approaching the island – the world’s largest gannet population - by boat, however, Scotland’s seabird population seems anything but precarious.

There are gannets everywhere. Male birds swoop past with seaweed in their mouths, taking it back to refurbish the nest, while others dive for fish.

And on the gannet-covered island tens of thousands of birds engage in a range of activities in a seemingly endless wave of motion.

Some are beak-fencing – mates playfully swordfighting as a bonding activity – while others are performing a territorial display involving bowing, dipping their heads and spreading their wings out backwards.

Read on....

Gannet colony on Bass Rock is world’s largest

The colony of Northern Gannets at Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth has been confirmed as the world’s largest colony with around 75,000 occupied sites, an increase of 24 percent since the last count in 2009.

Stuart Murray, who carried out the count in conjunction with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said: "The colony was photographed from the air on 23 June 2014. Conditions were excellent, with no wind and a high cover of thick cloud which obscured the sun, reducing the glare from all these startlingly white birds. The images were later viewed on computer screens for counting and each occupied site was blocked-out as it was counted.

"Interestingly, the most dramatic increase is between the old lighthouse keepers’ garden and the summit of the Rock. We counted around 10,000 sites in this area compared with 6,500 five years ago." 

Sarah Wanless, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said: “It is particularly heartening to see them doing so well when so many other seabirds in Scotland appear to be in trouble, however, the Bass Rock is a small island and the gannets have now filled most of the available nesting habitat. The colony now has only very limited capacity for further increase.”

Continued ...