Why Hundreds of Puffins Washed Up Dead on an Alaskan Beach

Lauren Divine first heard that the birds were dying on October 13, 2016, when one of her colleagues stumbled across the corpse of a tufted puffin while walking along a beach on Alaska’s St. Paul Island. The next day: another carcass. Soon, several of the island’s 450 residents started calling in with details of more stranded puffins. Some were already dead. Others were well on their way—emaciated, sick, and unable to fly.

Nestled in the middle of the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia, St. Paul is the largest of the four Pribilof Islands, which together support more than 2 million seabirds. Dead individuals aren’t uncommon. Divine’s team, which works on environmental issues that affect , would usually expect to find one or two on its monthly beach surveys. But that October, “you couldn’t walk more than a few steps before having