Avian flu has taken a heavy toll on seabirds in the UK with thousands killed this year, The Wildlife Trusts reveal.
The past two years have seen the most severe outbreak here since the virus emerged from a Chinese poultry farm in the 1990s.
In July, over 1,000 dead birds were removed from Pembrokeshire beaches, and Wales’s only nesting tern colony at Cemlyn Nature Reserve halved in a year.
Hundreds of dead kittiwakes, herring gulls and guillemots have washed up along the Aberdeenshire coast.
And Dorset Wildlife Trust found 600 mostly dead sandwich and common terns and black-headed gulls on Brownsea Island during the breeding season.
But there is cause for optimism. Northern gannets with black instead of pale blue eyes are more likely to be immune to the virus, while monitoring on Alderney near Guernsey suggests there was no bird flu there this year.
Meanwhile, other marine species are recovering, notably the Atlantic bluefin tuna, off the Devon and Cornwall coast as well as Scotland.
Dolphins and humpback whales are also making a comeback.
Dr Lissa Batey, head of marine conservation at The Wildlife Trusts, said: “Regulation is vital for protecting the natural world and reversing wildlife declines. When we give nature space, wildlife can recover – it’s as simple as that.”
