In May 2022, as many female northern gannets were preparing to lay their eggs, thousands began dying from the H5N1 bird flu virus that had recently reached North America.
The scale of the mortalities from the H5N1 outbreak among wild birds is unprecedented, with tens of thousands of gannets and around 24,000 Cape cormorants killed.
Scientists have grown increasingly concerned that the new strains of H5N1 could prompt the next pandemic, with implications extending beyond avian populations to global human health.
You have to harden your heart to work on this kind of scale of mortality; the devastation observed in northern gannets reflects a wider global crisis in avian health.
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