Last year, avian flu killed more than 6,000 birds on the Farne Islands. Guillemots and kittiwakes were impacted the most, with 3,542 and 818 killed by the virus respectively.
Nothing is easy for the gannets. Not in this age of warming seas, competition with trawlers for fish, pollution, supercharged storms and the onset of avian flu.
Though the risk to humans is low, scientists warn that outbreaks among farmed birds increase the potential for the virus to mutate and pose a threat to humans.
