| Colony | Year established | Mean yearly growth rate 1969-1974 (%) | No. of breeding pairs | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | ||||
| 1. | Runde | 1946 | 8.4 | 330 | 331 | 383 | 422 | 450 | 494 |
| 2. | Mosken | ca. 1960 | 5.4 | 50 | 83 | 77 | 60 | 62 | 65 |
| 3. | Nordmjele | 1967 | 83.3 | 7 | 36 | 65 | 103 | 127 | 145 |
| 4. | Syltefjord | 1961 | 14.5 | 28 | 29 | 44 | 48 | 51 | 55 |
| Total | 12.8 | 415 | 479 | 569 | 633 | 690 | 759 | ||
| Yearly growth rate (%) | 15.4 | 18.8 | 11.2 | 9.0 | 10.0 | ||||
Discussion
Impact of Human Activity
Direct Exploitation
According to Norwegian laws, all seabirds, with the exception (for some odd reason) of the gannet and fulmar, can be hunted from 21 August to 1 March. However, only the two species of murre and the razorbill are still regularly hunted and, although no statistics support it, an estimate based on interviews with some of the hunters reveals that murres and razorbills are shot in the ratio of about 50:1. One man can shoot as many as 380 murres and razorbills during a winter season as a sideline to fishing. Although not many hunt on this scale, an absolute minimum of 5,000 murres and razorbills are killed this way each season.
A new law based on modern principles of conservation has been under consideration for several years, and this will mean an improvement. However, the speed of the decline of the auks, particularly the murres, makes it imperative to stop this hunting immediately, and it is of very little economic importance to the few who take part. Some illegal "fishing" for auks still takes place at Røst and Vaerøy, where fishnets are anchored over wooden frames outside the auk colonies at the beginning of the nesting season. At Vedøy on Røst in 1972, up to 80 murres were taken daily. Thus an estimated total of 500-700 murres were taken that year—about 5% of the breeding population on this island.
Egg collecting was important during World War II, but in these more affluent times and because of the relative inaccessibility of the auks' nests, egg collecting is now both less attractive and less important. Human disturbance of the breeding colonies, however, is gradually becoming a more serious factor.
| Mosken | Nordmjele | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual growth rate | Breeding success (%) | Annual growth rate | Breeding success (%) | |
| 1969 | 62 | — | ||
| 1.66 | 5.14 | |||
| 1970 | 51 | 61 | ||
| 0.93 | 1.81 | |||
| 1971 | 36 | 46 | ||
| 0.78 | 1.58 | |||
| 1972 | 33 | 62 | ||
| 1.03 | 1.23 | |||
| 1973 | 50 | 35 | ||
| 1.05 | 1.14 | |||
| 1974 | 12 | 39 | ||
| 1969-1974 | 1.05 | 40 | 1.83 | 46 |
Fishing Gear
Although on a scale different from that in western Greenland, drift-net and longline fishing for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) outside the 19-km (12-mile) limit off the northern Norwegian coast present a serious mortality hazard to some seabirds. Reliable data exist only for the longline fisheries. In the 1969 season (with 75 effective days from mid-March to mid-June), one boat using 1,040 hooks per day caught 294 birds: 52 fulmars, 3 gannets, 43 kittiwakes, 107 murres, and 89 puffins. No razorbills were identified, but they may have been included in the murre figure. If this sample is representative, the 100 or so Norwegian boats using longlines plus about 20 Danish boats (which used 4,000-6,000 hooks per day and consequently caught more birds) would have caught roughly 10,000 fulmars, 600 gannets, 9,000 kittiwakes, 21,000 murres, and 18,000 puffins in the 1969 season. The drift-nets in Norwegian waters are reported to be less damaging to seabirds than are the longlines, but even without adding the figures from the drift-nets, the numbers are substantial in view of the size of the Norwegian breeding populations.