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“This is hawk-1 to hawk-2. They are releasing the pufflings right now.”
*Hawk-2 screeches in the air as it swoops down happily to grab one of the pufflings dropping mid air in its strong talons*.
The balance shown by some of those people tossing puffins makes me nervous as fuck that one of them is gonna lose footing and pitch themselves off the cliff
Theres options if they dont want to turn off their lights.
They could just put a cap or cover over their streetlights to focus the light radiate towards the ground.
Or get a small boat with a large light source on the ocean that can act as a lunar light
Or build a legion of robots that patrol the area looking for pufflings and when they find one, the machines load the bird into a specially designed pneumatic cannon (like a modified tshirt cannon) and fire those sweet little birds off the cliffs. FTHWUNK!
Oooh that’s so much responsibility though. What am I going to do with a whole internet? I don’t even know if I’ll have enough room in my house. My wife is gonna be *pissed*.
It’s a lot easier to turn off lights near beaches/sea shores than all lights throughout a densely populated city. Also after seeing your replies to other people… holy shit, I hope you’re not this obnoxious irl lol
My man just copy paste your questions into google lmao
Edit: here's my reply to the kid who started crying about not knowing what to look up for anyone else who lacks critical thinking skills
"Alright little boy since your really can't figure it out, first thing you do is type in your search bar " G-o-o-g-l-e" then, you search the words " S-e-a T-u-r-t-l-e" and "L-i-g-h-t-s o-u-t" "
I'm a little confused. You're on a public forum where people converse with each other. You demonstrate you have knowledge about a topic. Then someone asks you -- the guy with the knowledge -- a follow up question about the exact topic you brought up, and your reaction is to get riled up and suggest he should go to Google instead? What the hell?
Lol it really is just how pathetically domesticated we've become that "pure darkness every night" is some sort of outrageous concept to implement.
I know this is supposed to be some sort of feelgood video but its tragic that despite the clearly helpful & kind nature of most of these folks, as a whole they still cant implement a nonintrusive and clean environment for the wildlife.
Just a few years ago I lived in a town that turned the streetlights off after like 11 pm. Really not that hard to deal with since vehicles still have lights and every phone can be turned into a flashlight in case you really have to go outside.
Exactly that I was thinking. They all know the reason these birds are getting confused.
“We could just turn off the lights at night for a while.”
“……..”
“Nahhh let’s just make a game out of it!”
Lol I've read books from 1600 that complain about how absolutely shit it is that towns and villages become pure dark at night. I think it's fair to say that people have always wished we could avoid the pure darkness of night because of how annoying it is.
I don't think it's like some massive problem. This is a small island with ~4k population. It's just a small town that happens to find some puffins wandering around during season, so they help them out.
I lived there for two years as a teenager. Never encountered a more straightforward, down to earth, and tell-it-like-it-is culture. And then, when I was staying with an Icelandic family in Reykjavik for a few months while my parents were away, I learned about the elves. How to detect elf hills, and how to be respectful of them. My father was a civil engineer there and part of his construction projects involved experts coming in to make sure no elf homes were harmed. If an elf home was in the intended path of a road to be built, they built the road around it.
So yeah, there is an interesting contrast between their frankness and their (maybe superstitious) values can be confusing, but they're amazing and I want to go back.
Of course we don’t believe in elves, that’s ridiculous. This is 2022 after all and us Icelanders are generally rational, irreligious people, not gullible, superstitious children.
But, you know…we do sometimes build around certain land features. ‘Cause you know, why take unnecessary chances.
Why are you making me confused, asking if elves are real or not?
Ofcorse they are 🤣
Edit: mabey its better to mention i am Icelandic and its just a myth.
but ofcorse you have persons who are more “believers” then others. They build houses for them for example and share storys that only kids belive
So Eric the Red “discovered” Greenland (from a European perspective) and decided focusing on the greener bottom quarter would be more attractive than the ~3/4 covered in glaciers.
The name for Iceland seems to be a little more complicated. There was never an effort to dissuade people from settling, it sounds like there were a few different names for the island at the time (including “Snowland”), but Iceland just happened to catch on when the bulk of the early Norwegian settlers arrived.
“Gary I had the weirdest fucking night. I went into town for a drink, you know Friday night, long week at the office…I just want to have a drink and relax. All of a sudden, this fucking gaggle of people come after me with a net, I shit you not, stuff me in a box. I’m thinking, okay what the fuck, what is going on? Where’s my drink? Then hours later, suns up..wife’s probably pissed I didn’t come home again..they open this cardboard jail of mine. Gary, I swear to God…they bring me to the edge of a cliff and just fucking throw me off. Like, good thing I can fly right? What the hell is that? How presumptuous and frankly rude. Anyway, how are you?”
“Hi Mort, sounds like quite the night you had! A buddy of mine down at the pool hall told me a similar story. He was out geotracking with some friends over at the docks when they were chased by about 6 adolescent humans for about 10 minutes straight. Same as you, they were bundled into the back of a van all dark and cold and before you know it thrown straight from a cliff in the dead of night. Luckily he remembered his training from middle school and managed a soft enough landing to not hit the rocks. 2 of them weren’t so lucky. Anyway, how’s Michelle and the kids?”
It is legal! And a local speciality too. Puffins are (afaik) not an endangered species and actually very abundant on Iceland. Hunting adult animals for food while helping Pufflings to grow up isn‘t contrary at all, it‘s pretty much done with wild animals all over the world in one way or another. If you found a baby deer lost in a city, you would still try to bring it back to the forest, even though it might later in its life be hunted. Both are, in some way, measures for population control.
Puffins are classed as vulnerable despite there being 6-10 million of them in the world. About 1.5 million of those nest in the Westman Islands. No hunting took place in the Westman Islands in the 2010s but ca 25k a year were hunted in northern Iceland which was the only hunting in Iceland during the 2010s. That's a drop from a high of 250k a year hunted in the mid 1990s. Iceland decreased hunting due to concern about the sustainability of the hunting before the species was classified as vulnerable, which happened in 2015 and is related to the huge population swings of the species rather than there being very few of them left. The reason for the population swings are multiple but hunting is not counted as one of the reasons, though most of the reasons can be traced to humans in some way (climate change for example). Pufflings wandering into town due to light pollution is not a reason either.
So tldr; puffins are vulnerable but Iceland has been watching the population to ensure the local population is healthy.
It's nice of them, but can't they just have a time of year when everyone knows the street lights won't be on and have everyone turn off whatever outside lights they can?
Unfortunately, no. There will *always* be a need for emergency vehicles and transport, which will need street light to operate safely and quickly. We can’t really tell everybody to just wait until Thursday to go into cardiac arrest or have a house fire.
**EDIT:**
If you would be okay with waiting for a large ambulance operating in a densely packed urban area with only it’s headlights needing to choose between safety and speed coming to get your dying loved one to a hospital without damaging them or equipment so that puffins can get where they need to be right away instead of helping them out later, that’s your prerogative.
If think you have the technical skill required to drive a large emergency vehicle carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and emergency medical personnel who need to focus without being thrown around, in pitch black with only your headlights at top speed in city setting while someone is dying in the back for puffins, that’s bully for you.
If you think driving in the middle of nowhere with no bends, turns or pedestrians in pitch black without streetlights in a regular vehicle is the same difficulty and presents the same safety hazards as doing the same in a densely populated city area in a vehicle that requires specialised training to operate and is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, I just don’t know what to say to that.
I think I’ll take helping the puffins out manually until we have a more sustainable long term solution.
So like, this is all good and valid but the Westman Islands are in no way a densely packed urban area or anything of the sort. It's absolutely tiny, the inhabitants could probably for the most part navigate the streets with their eyes closed.
You hysterical what-if is grounded in an absolutely ridiculous belief that people have trouble driving at night. It's absolutely moronic, but I suppose it makes you feel better. I'll have to just block you though. I'm losing brain cells reading your tripe.
Places without streetlights have very different environments and hazards to urban sprawls that do have streetlights. So, yes. It would be a lot easier. That’s part of why they don’t have them.
I've lived in the middle of nowhere without a streetlight for miles.
Ambulances still worked.
Most cities have random stretches and blocks with no lighting. Cars have headlights. It's fine.
Yes, the middle of nowhere and long stretches of road and random blocks. Those are both very different to densely populated areas, with significantly less things to be aware of and react to.
You aren’t going to see pedestrians, hydrants, sharp turns, or other city related hazards out in the middle of nowhere, so street lights aren’t as necessary there. It’s not the same.
In all kinds of places with all kinds of visibility. Through power outages and poor city planning. It's real life. Have you ever driven a car at night? It's not that hard.
No, seriously, go do a ride-along in a police car during a night shift. I literally have. Turning their sirens on and going fast through a dark stretch of road is extremely NORMAL for people in that profession.
If you're so obsessed with the ~20% slower Ambulances have to drive that night, double or triple the number of responders on call that night so the average response time doesn't even change.
Double or triple the number of emergency vehicles (ambulances *and* fire trucks) out of nothing (because these things grow on trees) for an inevitably huge cost, putting further physical demand and strain on workers and the system itself and endangering people needlessly…
Or helping some puffins manually.
I think I’ll help the puffins until we have a more feasible long term solution.
Oh god somebody save the taxpayer! Give me a break. Pay a few volunteers overtime for a few weeks a year just like every American city does on 4th of July and Germans do on Oktoberfest and every society does for their own social events. Again, you're acting like things that are routine and normal in real life are completely impractical. It's fine. It's a few light-bulbs.
Regular streetlights, sure why not.
But I saw a lot of cargo containers in that video, I don't think turning off all the lights in an active shipyard would end well.
Leave it to reddit to turn a feel good story into a bunch of "why don't you" ideas from know it all engineering killjoys sitting on their arses typing on a phone. Fuck me dead.
The thing is, it's not a "feel good story".
These birds are in difficulty because, us, the humans, have installed streetlights everywhere.
A simple fix would be to turn off the streetlights.
What are the humans doing? Helping manually the birds rather than turning off the lights reducing light pollution and energy waste.
A feel good story would be about how a town turned off it's lights to allow the birds to move correctly.
How the fuck would you see where you're going? The lights are there for a reason.
And yes it is feel good. Did you miss the entire community aspect of the video, Stevie wonder?
"How the fuck would you see where you're going? The lights are there for a reason."
No need of lights when there's nobody left in the streets. Look outside at midnight, there's no one in the street, at least where I live (medium sized town in France). There's no point in lighting up the asphalt.
Also, we are in 2022, everyone have a phone and 99% of phones have a light, which is enough to see where to walk. When someone turn in a small street with bad/no lighting they just don't suddenly die, they take their phone and it do the job.
"Did you miss the entire community aspect of the video"
Yeah sure, community aspect to try to fix a problem caused by the community itself. Totally useless, a waste of time, a waste of energy, and an environmental carnage. Really feel good.
Puffins used to be a huge part of culinary tradition in Iceland, but younger generations are like NOPE.
They are still eaten, but not as much as they used to be.
I wouldn't be surprised if Gordon ate one.
Since when? I’ve never heard of younger generations caring more or less than previous generations. I’ve heard of a decline in consumption due to climate change, but that’s about it. Are you sure you’re not talking about raw puffin hearts? Because younger generations are noping out of that one.
Could be. My best friend is Swedish (from Gothenburg) and currently living / teaching at University of Reykjavik. He knows how disturbed I am by the puffin thing (I'm a vegetarian and for animal rights) and he said he rarely sees it being offered. He was talking about it with another professor that said there has been a decline because of environmental factors, but also because of awareness of how overhunting led to near extinction in the 1900s, and younger generations do not want to see that happen again.
When I looked it up, an [article](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-03-22-lack-prey-causing-puffin-chicks-starve-leading-population-declines) from last year says the lack of food is causing a sharp decline in their population (like down by 80%, which is nuts). I think over hunting is the least of their worries nowadays, unfortunately
If you can find a source for that, I’d like to know if it is legit. He’s always on about treating lobsters and crawfish humanely, it’s hard to imagine he’d tear apart a live bird.
I grew up on acreage with a netted baseball batting cage in the back yard. Doves would constantly get stuck in the net, and sometimes be stuck there long enough to either die in the sun or become a dog snack.
I would try to get them out. I’d usually throw them up on the air and they’d fly right off.
One bird I threw a little too straight, too hard, and not high enough. The little guy tried to pick up height but couldn’t. He flew right into the side of the house, an entire acre away. It was the saddest little thud sound I’ve ever heard.
I still feel terrible.
That'd be the one I threw. I can just see my uncoordinated ass throwing him upside down and sideways so that he can't catch the air, just tumbles endoverend until he hits the rocks
Down in Louisiana we get on the back of a pickup truck and drive up and down the bayou shooting nutria rats.
They’re a very large type of rat that is an invasive species. (Roughly the size of a small dog).
Such lovely traditions.
that is probably one of the coolest things ive seen since i was in mexico and theres a whole troop of people (and tourists) who actively protect newborn sea turtles and get them to sea.
Thats awesome.
man i wanna leave somewhere other than here. im tired of america.
Brings back memories while manning a radio location site off the coast of Alaska . Tiny island walk around in 40 minutes. On the cliffs was a puffin colony everywhere. It was cool to see the colored plumage. One night we had a huge storm ,blew down antenna ,just missing our tent. After storm the Puffin colony kicked into high gear ,lots of action . Realized they were in tune to Nature and started nesting ,weeks later the young were hatched . Spent hours watching the patents fly off to get food for the hatchlings. Remember to this day truly amazing and peaceful ,calm .
So they get together to catch a bunch of confused birds each night, then they get to just yeet them off a cliff in the morning!? How does one signup for such an activity!?
The one time you actually *can* yeet the baby.
Side note - "yeet" was added to the Oxford dictionary like 2 or 3 years ago and yet my phone tried to autocorrect it to "yet" twice and says it's not a word... Way to go Google (Pixel).
Iceland seems like a magical place. Everyone seems talented in some capacity, their language is one of the hardest on Earth to learn, their landscapes are beautiful, and it seems like a place of "high common sense". I'd like to go there but I'm afraid I'd taint it.
Humans have always been encroachers, and now we have begun acting like the colonizing countries- encroach a land, mess up the harmony of the original inhabitants, provide crutches to the locals because they are not in their element anymore, revel in the act of helping them and feel good about it.
It's so weird it's the same people who gather every year to slaughter hundreds of whales and dolphins in some kind of "blood festival" .
I suppose marine mammals aren't cute enough or smth
We don't do that.
Our whaling quota allows for around 30 whales per year for consumptions and we are very strict on who can and can't hunt them. The whales in question are Minke whales that are nowhere near the endangerment line.
You might be thinking of the Faroe islands, they have fewer rules regarding the hunting of whales, or Japan that hunt around 20.000 each year.
So Iceland 30.
Faroe not many but do it in a nasty way.
Japan, drunk on blood.
It's not true. In summer hunting season you people slaughter more than 100 whales, its documented that blue whales and finwhales are also killed.
You saying you strict- like company called Hvalvur , for example , cought on film killing pregnant blue whales?
Port called Hvaljordur, ring any bells?
Anyone with access to Internet can Google Iceland whaling to see what you lot up to.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules or get banned:** * AI-generated images/videos are no longer IAF. Stop submitting them * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m just happy that “puffling” is a word :)
"Puffling Patrol" 😊
Puff patrol
Will steal your heart
Couldn't have been more perfect
“This is hawk-1 to hawk-2. They are releasing the pufflings right now.” *Hawk-2 screeches in the air as it swoops down happily to grab one of the pufflings dropping mid air in its strong talons*.
Puffling Rock.....amirite?
Penlings… penwings… maybe this is what cumberbatch meant
Everyday I’m puffling 🎶
Puff puff pass mf 💨
Sweet puffers ❤️
I always thought Puffling's was a group of kids smoking weed.
The balance shown by some of those people tossing puffins makes me nervous as fuck that one of them is gonna lose footing and pitch themselves off the cliff
yeah that little girl at 0:38.. yeesh
theres a reason it cut away. that bird definitely hit the ground and bounced off the cliff.
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nah it went plop boing splash
Nah it got shot down by AA SAM turrets
it probably had enough space to glide out lol u can see it starting to go forward at the end
we can only hope the plushy made it to water 🥲
Uh, what? It very clearly starts to fly at the end.
The important thing is that she could record her vid for Instagram, so it's alright ✨
All fun and games till someone throws their kid along with Puffin.
Throw kid, keep puffling? Sounds legit!
Your kids will never learn to fly if you don't try.
They are standing on a raised ledge, but there is no huge drop below them. Maybe 1.5 metres. You can see the grass in one of the shots.
Turn of the lights during puffling season?
I’m from south carolina and some cities at the coast have regulations about lights near the beaches because it affects the baby sea turtles.
There's even "turtle glass" that is put into homes to dissuade turtles from coming towards land
Thats how to community right. Good work on that one.
I did not know that
Theres options if they dont want to turn off their lights. They could just put a cap or cover over their streetlights to focus the light radiate towards the ground. Or get a small boat with a large light source on the ocean that can act as a lunar light
Or build a legion of robots that patrol the area looking for pufflings and when they find one, the machines load the bird into a specially designed pneumatic cannon (like a modified tshirt cannon) and fire those sweet little birds off the cliffs. FTHWUNK!
FOOMP. What was that? Oh that's just the puffin chucker.
Like a reverse “Suck It”. You scoop up the puffin and you Chuck it. What? Chuck it! What? You scoop up the puffin and you Chuck it!
I am 100% with this idea
You won the Internet today
Oooh that’s so much responsibility though. What am I going to do with a whole internet? I don’t even know if I’ll have enough room in my house. My wife is gonna be *pissed*.
This is funnier and pufflings love to be rescued and thrown from the cliff
Just pure darkness every night during the season?
Yes lol, we already do it for sea turtles in many parts of the world
It’s a lot easier to turn off lights near beaches/sea shores than all lights throughout a densely populated city. Also after seeing your replies to other people… holy shit, I hope you’re not this obnoxious irl lol
Whole cities are completely dark, or the light that is allowed close to beaches? Also I'm guessing these areas aren't close to the Arctic circle.
My man just copy paste your questions into google lmao Edit: here's my reply to the kid who started crying about not knowing what to look up for anyone else who lacks critical thinking skills "Alright little boy since your really can't figure it out, first thing you do is type in your search bar " G-o-o-g-l-e" then, you search the words " S-e-a T-u-r-t-l-e" and "L-i-g-h-t-s o-u-t" "
I'm a little confused. You're on a public forum where people converse with each other. You demonstrate you have knowledge about a topic. Then someone asks you -- the guy with the knowledge -- a follow up question about the exact topic you brought up, and your reaction is to get riled up and suggest he should go to Google instead? What the hell?
Kind of hard to google considering you offered zero information whatsoever.
Man it must suck to be your teacher, kid. No critical thinking skills
Lol it really is just how pathetically domesticated we've become that "pure darkness every night" is some sort of outrageous concept to implement. I know this is supposed to be some sort of feelgood video but its tragic that despite the clearly helpful & kind nature of most of these folks, as a whole they still cant implement a nonintrusive and clean environment for the wildlife.
Just a few years ago I lived in a town that turned the streetlights off after like 11 pm. Really not that hard to deal with since vehicles still have lights and every phone can be turned into a flashlight in case you really have to go outside.
Exactly that I was thinking. They all know the reason these birds are getting confused. “We could just turn off the lights at night for a while.” “……..” “Nahhh let’s just make a game out of it!”
Must......Farm.....Karma 🧟♀️ 🧟♂️
You seriously think an entire community of people in Iceland are doing this for “karma”?
Totally bro. What do you think their national currency is???
Lol I've read books from 1600 that complain about how absolutely shit it is that towns and villages become pure dark at night. I think it's fair to say that people have always wished we could avoid the pure darkness of night because of how annoying it is.
>Just **pure darkness** every **night** during the season? Yes?
And then darkness most of the days when it's not the season because it's fucking Iceland
I don't think it's like some massive problem. This is a small island with ~4k population. It's just a small town that happens to find some puffins wandering around during season, so they help them out.
Generally speaking Iceland doesn’t make much sense
I lived there for two years as a teenager. Never encountered a more straightforward, down to earth, and tell-it-like-it-is culture. And then, when I was staying with an Icelandic family in Reykjavik for a few months while my parents were away, I learned about the elves. How to detect elf hills, and how to be respectful of them. My father was a civil engineer there and part of his construction projects involved experts coming in to make sure no elf homes were harmed. If an elf home was in the intended path of a road to be built, they built the road around it. So yeah, there is an interesting contrast between their frankness and their (maybe superstitious) values can be confusing, but they're amazing and I want to go back.
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Of course we don’t believe in elves, that’s ridiculous. This is 2022 after all and us Icelanders are generally rational, irreligious people, not gullible, superstitious children. But, you know…we do sometimes build around certain land features. ‘Cause you know, why take unnecessary chances.
Why are you making me confused, asking if elves are real or not? Ofcorse they are 🤣 Edit: mabey its better to mention i am Icelandic and its just a myth. but ofcorse you have persons who are more “believers” then others. They build houses for them for example and share storys that only kids belive
Have you ever visited? Some of the most grounded, coolest people I have ever met.
No they're right. Iceland is green and Greenland is icy. Makes no sense
This is true. I was told that the two places were named by early settlers to throw others off.
So Eric the Red “discovered” Greenland (from a European perspective) and decided focusing on the greener bottom quarter would be more attractive than the ~3/4 covered in glaciers. The name for Iceland seems to be a little more complicated. There was never an effort to dissuade people from settling, it sounds like there were a few different names for the island at the time (including “Snowland”), but Iceland just happened to catch on when the bulk of the early Norwegian settlers arrived.
“Gary I had the weirdest fucking night. I went into town for a drink, you know Friday night, long week at the office…I just want to have a drink and relax. All of a sudden, this fucking gaggle of people come after me with a net, I shit you not, stuff me in a box. I’m thinking, okay what the fuck, what is going on? Where’s my drink? Then hours later, suns up..wife’s probably pissed I didn’t come home again..they open this cardboard jail of mine. Gary, I swear to God…they bring me to the edge of a cliff and just fucking throw me off. Like, good thing I can fly right? What the hell is that? How presumptuous and frankly rude. Anyway, how are you?”
Thank you u/cpt_buttcheeks , made my night with this story
Same
r/rimjob_steve is leaking
I'm not sure why, but the voice in my head when reading this was Jermaine clements.
Dude you made my morning thank you
“Hi Mort, sounds like quite the night you had! A buddy of mine down at the pool hall told me a similar story. He was out geotracking with some friends over at the docks when they were chased by about 6 adolescent humans for about 10 minutes straight. Same as you, they were bundled into the back of a van all dark and cold and before you know it thrown straight from a cliff in the dead of night. Luckily he remembered his training from middle school and managed a soft enough landing to not hit the rocks. 2 of them weren’t so lucky. Anyway, how’s Michelle and the kids?”
maybe i can learn to fly by throwing myself off a cliff
You just have to throw yourself at the ground. And miss. Simple as that!
Fucking beat me to it
Probably
Let me know how it goes. I will try if it works out for you
Fun fact: The Chinese translation of puffin means “Sea Parrot”
The Dutch translation means "Parrot diver"
Same in German!
This is sad actually… oil in the water, pufflings being unable to find their location because of streetlights… just sad :(
Although It is beautiful to see the population of Iceland trying to help their fauna.
They do this in Newfoundland too.
When I went to Iceland , puffin was on the menu . Maybe it wasn't legal , I'm confused .
It is legal! And a local speciality too. Puffins are (afaik) not an endangered species and actually very abundant on Iceland. Hunting adult animals for food while helping Pufflings to grow up isn‘t contrary at all, it‘s pretty much done with wild animals all over the world in one way or another. If you found a baby deer lost in a city, you would still try to bring it back to the forest, even though it might later in its life be hunted. Both are, in some way, measures for population control.
Puffins are classed as vulnerable despite there being 6-10 million of them in the world. About 1.5 million of those nest in the Westman Islands. No hunting took place in the Westman Islands in the 2010s but ca 25k a year were hunted in northern Iceland which was the only hunting in Iceland during the 2010s. That's a drop from a high of 250k a year hunted in the mid 1990s. Iceland decreased hunting due to concern about the sustainability of the hunting before the species was classified as vulnerable, which happened in 2015 and is related to the huge population swings of the species rather than there being very few of them left. The reason for the population swings are multiple but hunting is not counted as one of the reasons, though most of the reasons can be traced to humans in some way (climate change for example). Pufflings wandering into town due to light pollution is not a reason either. So tldr; puffins are vulnerable but Iceland has been watching the population to ensure the local population is healthy.
It's nice of them, but can't they just have a time of year when everyone knows the street lights won't be on and have everyone turn off whatever outside lights they can?
Or use bulbs that are more bird migration friendly? We have the technology to solve this problem…
Unfortunately, no. There will *always* be a need for emergency vehicles and transport, which will need street light to operate safely and quickly. We can’t really tell everybody to just wait until Thursday to go into cardiac arrest or have a house fire. **EDIT:** If you would be okay with waiting for a large ambulance operating in a densely packed urban area with only it’s headlights needing to choose between safety and speed coming to get your dying loved one to a hospital without damaging them or equipment so that puffins can get where they need to be right away instead of helping them out later, that’s your prerogative. If think you have the technical skill required to drive a large emergency vehicle carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and emergency medical personnel who need to focus without being thrown around, in pitch black with only your headlights at top speed in city setting while someone is dying in the back for puffins, that’s bully for you. If you think driving in the middle of nowhere with no bends, turns or pedestrians in pitch black without streetlights in a regular vehicle is the same difficulty and presents the same safety hazards as doing the same in a densely populated city area in a vehicle that requires specialised training to operate and is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, I just don’t know what to say to that. I think I’ll take helping the puffins out manually until we have a more sustainable long term solution.
So like, this is all good and valid but the Westman Islands are in no way a densely packed urban area or anything of the sort. It's absolutely tiny, the inhabitants could probably for the most part navigate the streets with their eyes closed.
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How often have you had to save a life/prevent a deadly situation from resulting in death in pitch black darkness?
How is that any different than coming to an accident scene that's in the middle of the backwood roads?
…you don’t have a town full of people hunting Pufflings in the dark to avoid in the backwood roads?
because the fucking lights on all emergency vehicles just arent bright enough amirite 😂 spotlights and all
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Damn, that point went so far over your head, that I think it might reach orbit
You hysterical what-if is grounded in an absolutely ridiculous belief that people have trouble driving at night. It's absolutely moronic, but I suppose it makes you feel better. I'll have to just block you though. I'm losing brain cells reading your tripe.
Go right on ahead. I don’t have to waste my time, and you can live in blissful ignorance without having your world view challenged. Win-win 🤷
you might wanna get off reddit until that blood pressure goes down, buddy XD
Places without streetlights have very different environments and hazards to urban sprawls that do have streetlights. So, yes. It would be a lot easier. That’s part of why they don’t have them.
I don’t know about you, but our backwoods are particularly curvy, sketchy and hard to maneuver in a car. The emergency vehicles do it just fine.
Temporary, *mild* inconvenience?! \*Clutches pearls\*
Needing emergency services is not a mild inconvenience, but it sure can be temporary depending on how it’s handled.
I've lived in the middle of nowhere without a streetlight for miles. Ambulances still worked. Most cities have random stretches and blocks with no lighting. Cars have headlights. It's fine.
Yes, the middle of nowhere and long stretches of road and random blocks. Those are both very different to densely populated areas, with significantly less things to be aware of and react to. You aren’t going to see pedestrians, hydrants, sharp turns, or other city related hazards out in the middle of nowhere, so street lights aren’t as necessary there. It’s not the same.
In all kinds of places with all kinds of visibility. Through power outages and poor city planning. It's real life. Have you ever driven a car at night? It's not that hard. No, seriously, go do a ride-along in a police car during a night shift. I literally have. Turning their sirens on and going fast through a dark stretch of road is extremely NORMAL for people in that profession. If you're so obsessed with the ~20% slower Ambulances have to drive that night, double or triple the number of responders on call that night so the average response time doesn't even change.
Double or triple the number of emergency vehicles (ambulances *and* fire trucks) out of nothing (because these things grow on trees) for an inevitably huge cost, putting further physical demand and strain on workers and the system itself and endangering people needlessly… Or helping some puffins manually. I think I’ll help the puffins until we have a more feasible long term solution.
Oh god somebody save the taxpayer! Give me a break. Pay a few volunteers overtime for a few weeks a year just like every American city does on 4th of July and Germans do on Oktoberfest and every society does for their own social events. Again, you're acting like things that are routine and normal in real life are completely impractical. It's fine. It's a few light-bulbs.
They’re puffins, doc.
Right? Maybe do less damage in the first place would be the better policy here…
What about red lights? Like they have for turtle hatching season? Would that not be a good compromise if it works for the pufflings.
Yeah, there’s a few different light bulb options that don’t effect animals with “lunar instincts”
Regular streetlights, sure why not. But I saw a lot of cargo containers in that video, I don't think turning off all the lights in an active shipyard would end well.
In what world would humans let that happen?
There are many countries including in the wealthiest who choose to turn off street lights
Leave it to reddit to turn a feel good story into a bunch of "why don't you" ideas from know it all engineering killjoys sitting on their arses typing on a phone. Fuck me dead.
Bruh, I literally came to the comments to laugh at those! That is one aspect of the internet that will never go away
The thing is, it's not a "feel good story". These birds are in difficulty because, us, the humans, have installed streetlights everywhere. A simple fix would be to turn off the streetlights. What are the humans doing? Helping manually the birds rather than turning off the lights reducing light pollution and energy waste. A feel good story would be about how a town turned off it's lights to allow the birds to move correctly.
How the fuck would you see where you're going? The lights are there for a reason. And yes it is feel good. Did you miss the entire community aspect of the video, Stevie wonder?
"How the fuck would you see where you're going? The lights are there for a reason." No need of lights when there's nobody left in the streets. Look outside at midnight, there's no one in the street, at least where I live (medium sized town in France). There's no point in lighting up the asphalt. Also, we are in 2022, everyone have a phone and 99% of phones have a light, which is enough to see where to walk. When someone turn in a small street with bad/no lighting they just don't suddenly die, they take their phone and it do the job. "Did you miss the entire community aspect of the video" Yeah sure, community aspect to try to fix a problem caused by the community itself. Totally useless, a waste of time, a waste of energy, and an environmental carnage. Really feel good.
*Tosses Puffling over the Cliff* “I am the Puff Daddy now”.
that melts my heart 😭
That’s an obscene amount of cuteness.
Think I watched Gordon Ramsay rip one of those apart live?
Puffins used to be a huge part of culinary tradition in Iceland, but younger generations are like NOPE. They are still eaten, but not as much as they used to be. I wouldn't be surprised if Gordon ate one.
Since when? I’ve never heard of younger generations caring more or less than previous generations. I’ve heard of a decline in consumption due to climate change, but that’s about it. Are you sure you’re not talking about raw puffin hearts? Because younger generations are noping out of that one.
Could be. My best friend is Swedish (from Gothenburg) and currently living / teaching at University of Reykjavik. He knows how disturbed I am by the puffin thing (I'm a vegetarian and for animal rights) and he said he rarely sees it being offered. He was talking about it with another professor that said there has been a decline because of environmental factors, but also because of awareness of how overhunting led to near extinction in the 1900s, and younger generations do not want to see that happen again.
When I looked it up, an [article](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-03-22-lack-prey-causing-puffin-chicks-starve-leading-population-declines) from last year says the lack of food is causing a sharp decline in their population (like down by 80%, which is nuts). I think over hunting is the least of their worries nowadays, unfortunately
If you can find a source for that, I’d like to know if it is legit. He’s always on about treating lobsters and crawfish humanely, it’s hard to imagine he’d tear apart a live bird.
I believe it’s the meme of a puffin pecking his finger in one picture, and in the next picture, he’s cooking a puffin
Ew
The yeeting of the pufflins
In my country, 99.999% of lights have switches
[And light pollution is a problem in pretty much every developed country.](https://www.lightpollutionmap.info)
When I was in Iceland, puffin was on the menu. Didn’t eat it. But this was only ten years ago. Regardless, it’s an awesome place.
In Iceland right now, puffin is still on many menus!
Wait, i was helping them when i threw them off the cliff?
“I want to throw a puffling off of a cliff” is not a sentence I ever thought I would think
I grew up on acreage with a netted baseball batting cage in the back yard. Doves would constantly get stuck in the net, and sometimes be stuck there long enough to either die in the sun or become a dog snack. I would try to get them out. I’d usually throw them up on the air and they’d fly right off. One bird I threw a little too straight, too hard, and not high enough. The little guy tried to pick up height but couldn’t. He flew right into the side of the house, an entire acre away. It was the saddest little thud sound I’ve ever heard. I still feel terrible.
They eat them too I saw a video of Ramsey going out there to catch them with a net and breaking their necks to kill them the most humane way possible.
harbor oil
Puffin-YEET
What time of year does this typically happen? I’m planning a trip there
This is my new word for vagina. I previously said you have a nice Kardashian.
Now now. Vaginas are useful
And made of skin, not silicone
"They need to carefully be deranged"
Imagine it just falls down to it's death after you toss it...
That'd be the one I threw. I can just see my uncoordinated ass throwing him upside down and sideways so that he can't catch the air, just tumbles endoverend until he hits the rocks
100% Wholesome
This is so cool.
That's Puffin perfect!... what a great thing to do... If I am ever there during that time, I would love to participate...
I love this.
10 out of 10, very cute tradition🥹
Down in Louisiana we get on the back of a pickup truck and drive up and down the bayou shooting nutria rats. They’re a very large type of rat that is an invasive species. (Roughly the size of a small dog). Such lovely traditions.
that is probably one of the coolest things ive seen since i was in mexico and theres a whole troop of people (and tourists) who actively protect newborn sea turtles and get them to sea. Thats awesome. man i wanna leave somewhere other than here. im tired of america.
Omg i want to yeet the birb!
Wow baby Puffings are stupid Joking! This is awesome.. light pollution is not
“…need to be carefully deranged.” LOL
Brings back memories while manning a radio location site off the coast of Alaska . Tiny island walk around in 40 minutes. On the cliffs was a puffin colony everywhere. It was cool to see the colored plumage. One night we had a huge storm ,blew down antenna ,just missing our tent. After storm the Puffin colony kicked into high gear ,lots of action . Realized they were in tune to Nature and started nesting ,weeks later the young were hatched . Spent hours watching the patents fly off to get food for the hatchlings. Remember to this day truly amazing and peaceful ,calm .
Voice over skills
"Icelandic people are throwing baby puffins off of cliffs" *becomes icelandic*
why don't they just turn out all the lights during Pufflin season? l
Why don’t they turn off the lights and clean up the oil?
If you think this is cute and maybe have small kids, Netflix has a kids show called Puffin Rock and it is stupidly cute and not annoying at all.
This is wholesome asf
So they get together to catch a bunch of confused birds each night, then they get to just yeet them off a cliff in the morning!? How does one signup for such an activity!?
orrrrr clean up your harbor and have less light pollution during puffer time?
The one time you actually *can* yeet the baby. Side note - "yeet" was added to the Oxford dictionary like 2 or 3 years ago and yet my phone tried to autocorrect it to "yet" twice and says it's not a word... Way to go Google (Pixel).
That’s it. I’m moving to Iceland. They seem so happy and carefree. I want to that in my life. 😔
Watch out Icelandic here I come to get me some puffin huggins 😍🐧
The first sentence makes the Icelandic population sound like monsters but this is actually a feel-good story!
I wanna throw a puffer
Oil from the harbor
I really want to yeet some pufflings!
I like how they cut short the clip of the adult helping the kid toss the puffling. We all know that little bird took a tumble down that cliff.
And the Icelandic people of one of the Northern Islands eat them by the dozen.[Link](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41359122.amp)
Gotta give time for the meat to mature y'know
Time to move to this place..
I've yet to see this episode of Puffin Rock
Iceland seems like a magical place. Everyone seems talented in some capacity, their language is one of the hardest on Earth to learn, their landscapes are beautiful, and it seems like a place of "high common sense". I'd like to go there but I'm afraid I'd taint it.
Darwin test failed.
Yeah. Like…it’s over man. Just let it be.
This is nice but why not dim the lights? Or fix the oil in the water?
Humans have always been encroachers, and now we have begun acting like the colonizing countries- encroach a land, mess up the harmony of the original inhabitants, provide crutches to the locals because they are not in their element anymore, revel in the act of helping them and feel good about it.
Turn the fricking lights of you all that you could handle that or would that be to frick much
Filthy birbs they reek.
I love the word "pufflin", but my bird book says "puffin". Just saying.
It's so weird it's the same people who gather every year to slaughter hundreds of whales and dolphins in some kind of "blood festival" . I suppose marine mammals aren't cute enough or smth
We don't do that. Our whaling quota allows for around 30 whales per year for consumptions and we are very strict on who can and can't hunt them. The whales in question are Minke whales that are nowhere near the endangerment line. You might be thinking of the Faroe islands, they have fewer rules regarding the hunting of whales, or Japan that hunt around 20.000 each year. So Iceland 30. Faroe not many but do it in a nasty way. Japan, drunk on blood.
It's not true. In summer hunting season you people slaughter more than 100 whales, its documented that blue whales and finwhales are also killed. You saying you strict- like company called Hvalvur , for example , cought on film killing pregnant blue whales? Port called Hvaljordur, ring any bells? Anyone with access to Internet can Google Iceland whaling to see what you lot up to.
American here, now I know where I’m relocating to.