After a Devastating Fowl Flu Outbreak, Scotland's Seabirds Are Slowly Recovering—and So Are the Scientists Who Witnessed Their Decline

The world’s largest colony of northern gannets was decimated by chook flu in 2022. Now, as their numbers climb once more, researchers are gathering knowledge to know the virus’ lasting results

Rebecca Heisman, bioGraphic

February 18, 2026

Fowl flu devastated a colony of northern gannets, seabirds nearly the scale of albatrosses, on Bass Rock in Scotland. Researchers working with the birds are holding onto hope that the breeding inhabitants will slowly construct the colony again.
thomascanss / Shutterstock

Bass Rock, a guano-covered hunk of rock off Scotland’s east coast, boasts the biggest northern gannet colony on the earth. With steep sides and a rounded prime, Bass Rock is prime nesting territory, and within the spring of 2022, tens of 1000’s of the birds did what they all the time do—pack the island to put their eggs and lift their younger. However by the tip of summer season, issues had gone horribly incorrect. Extremely pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) had reached the island. The consequence was devastation—for the birds, but in addition for the researchers who’ve dedicated many years of their lives to defending them.

Avian flu comes and goes. But since 2020, a brand new, extraordinarily contagious pressure has been ravaging chook populations throughout the planet. First recognized in Europe, this ongoing HPAI outbreak has been killing and debilitating wild and domesticated birds, in addition to quite a few mammal species. Avian influenza’s impact on seabirds has been particularly extreme; in the UK, for instance, the breeding inhabitants of northern gannets (Morus bassanus) declined by 25 p.c, whereas the roseate tern breeding inhabitants fell by 21 p.c, in keeping with 2023 counts. The nice skua, a big brown seabird, has been significantly exhausting hit—its breeding inhabitants dropped by a dire 76 p.c throughout Scotland after the outbreak.

Jude Lane, a conservation scientist with the U.Ok.-based Royal Society for the Safety of Birds, first got here to Bass Rock in 2015 as a doctoral pupil and has returned yearly since. Normally, she says, a seabird colony is a “very smelly, very noisy” place. With so many birds in tight confines, “it’s mainly simply filthy. You get Bass Rock in your hair and in your garments,” she says.

That’s what it was like when Lane traveled to the island in April 2022, originally of the nesting season. All the pieces appeared regular. Then, in early June, the primary gannet on Bass Rock examined optimistic for HPAI.

“Two weeks later, it was completely devastating. It was simply so quiet,” says Lane. “I don’t assume a seabird colony is ever quiet. However at Bass Rock, it was simply eerie.”

By the tip of the month, a drone flying over Bass Rock photographed greater than 5,000 useless birds. In lots of instances, these had been animals that Lane knew. Years of fieldwork had given her the familiarity to acknowledge particular person birds. “They’d actually sat there and died while incubating eggs,” she says. “It was simply heartbreaking to see what [the virus] did to them.”

Fast info: Fowl flu infections in people

Seventy instances of the avian influenza pressure H5N1 in folks have been reported in the USA since 2024, together with one loss of life. Nobody-to-person unfold has been reported.
In November 2025, an individual in Washington State died from a unique pressure of avian influenza, referred to as H5N5. Consultants have emphasised that the danger to the general public is low.

In 2021, earlier than HPAI ripped by means of, there had been roughly 160,000 gannets on Bass Rock. By 2023, that quantity had dropped to lower than 105,000. Not each gannet that contracts HPAI dies. However Lane and her colleagues observed that even the birds that recovered had been removed from unscathed. The truth is, many had been modified by the an infection in a most sudden method: The irises of their eyes turned from vivid blue to black.

Lane is working with ophthalmologists to know why this occurs and what broader impact, if any, this weird transformation has had on the birds. Within the meantime, the invention provides Lane and her colleagues a solution to determine gannets that had been contaminated by HPAI after which recovered, to allow them to monitor lingering results.

One current research led by Lane and Sue Lewis, an ecologist at Scotland’s Edinburgh Napier College, investigated the reproductive success of HPAI survivors in contrast with birds that had been by no means contaminated. The excellent news: There was no distinction in fertility between the 2 teams. The dangerous information: Reproductive success for the colony remains to be decrease than earlier than the illness ran by means of, in all probability as a result of lack of so many skilled dad and mom.

Twenty years in the past, Lewis studied the Bass Rock gannets for her doctoral analysis. She stopped doing fieldwork round 2007, as soon as she started instructing and began a household, however she nonetheless checks in to gather knowledge on how the gannets are doing utilizing distant cameras operated by a charity referred to as the Scottish Seabird Heart. Lewis’ scheduled remark window overlaps with breakfast time in her own residence, and he or she likes to observe the birds from her kitchen desk whereas her youngsters are preparing for college. If a chook will get ornery and begins pecking at its neighbor, “I begin shouting at them by means of the display,” she admits. Even from a distance, watching the HPAI outbreak unfold was “completely gutting,” Lewis says.

Hope, Lewis admits, will not be a scientific idea. However proper now, hope is what retains her going. “I simply preserve considering, ‘Subsequent yr, will breeding success be up a bit?’ And hoping that that does occur.”

Johanna Harvey, an HPAI professional on the College of Rhode Island who will not be concerned in finding out Bass Rock’s birds, worries that as the worldwide HPAI outbreak drags on, folks will turn into complacent.

“It’s such a dynamic illness that evolves in a short time, and this present clade of virus that has unfold globally has thrown us numerous curveballs,” Harvey says. “It’s nonetheless very a lot taking place and really a lot evolving.”

HPAI is simply the most recent within the lengthy checklist of threats confronted by seabird populations, which additionally consists of local weather change, overfishing and offshore wind improvement. For now, Lane and the opposite researchers finding out Bass Rock’s northern gannets are taking it one yr at a time.

Not like another threats, researchers witnessed HPAI declare its victims firsthand, and it was a visceral expertise they’ll always remember. To deal with such scenes of struggling, Lewis, Lane and different scientists are gathering as a lot knowledge as potential. Their hope is that by studying as a lot as they’ll now, they are going to be higher capable of assist the species they love sooner or later.

This story initially appeared in bioGraphic, an unbiased journal about nature and regeneration powered by the California Academy of Sciences.