Rhinoceros Auklets are actually puffins, but that’s another story. Let’s just call them “Rhinos” for now. Ironically, the sanctuary that offers protection to Rhinos and other seabirds did not live up to its name last Tuesday when fire razed the southwest tip of Protection Island. 

This is prime nesting habitat for thousands of Rhinos, which, being typical puffins, raise their chicks in underground burrows. Chicks were present when the fire occurred. 

Standing on the beach at Beckett Point last week, watching thick smoke rising over the island, I grimly imagined Rhino chicks roasting in their burrows or choking to death on hot smoke. 

I have studied seabirds, and the myriad ways that humans harm them, for 45 years. But this was the first time I have seen fire in a seabird colony and I hope it will be the last. Biologists are still investigating damages. 

For now my hope is that most chicks were protected in their deep burrows, that adults were willing to return to their charred nests at night to feed their chicks, that the vegetation will return next year, and that those who perpetrated this crime will be held accountable.

We need to renew our commitment to protecting Protection Island and its wildlife. It is the crown jewel for seabirds in the Salish Sea. 

The Rhinos on this refuge comprise 80 percent of West Coast populations, and about a third of all U.S. (including Alaska) Rhino populations. It is the largest single colony of any puffin species on the west coast. 

It also contains thousands of other nesting seabirds, including guillemots, gulls, cormorants, and hundreds of marine mammals including seals and sea lions.  

If Protection Island is the jewel, then Admiralty Inlet is the crown that supports it. Strong tidal currents squeeze through the narrow inlet to Puget Sound, creating turbulence and mixing that promote local production. Shallow banks on each side teem with sand lance, sustaining tens of thousands of seabirds during summer.  

Densities of Rhinos are especially high on the Port Townsend Bay shelf, and flocks of hundreds or thousands may be seen while crossing on the ferry. Below them, Chinook salmon gorge on the same forage fish (hence the presence of fishing boats).    

The tide-powered Admiralty engine runs year-round and densities of fish-eating seabirds in the inlet are unusually high at all times of the year. Indeed, the inlet rivals other seabird hotspots found in shelf and coastal ecosystems from California to Alaska. 

Admiralty Inlet is a small marine area, but a regionally significant biological hotspot. Sadly, fish-eating seabirds in the Salish Sea have declined by more than half in recent decades, and many folks are working to understand the cause for that. 

In the interest of conservation and education, Port Townsend could adopt the Rhinoceros Puffin as its official mascot and the Marine Science Center could use it to teach visitors how the Admiralty Inlet marine ecosystem works to create a “marine Serengeti” we can all enjoy. 

(John Piatt is a research biologist and studies seabirds and forage fish around the world. He has lived in Port Townsend since 2004.) 

(Photograph of adult Rhinoceros Auklets was provided by Peter Harrison, author of “Seabirds: The New Identification Guide” [Lynx Edicions, 2021].)