The offshore rocks and islands along the Olympic coast form part of a national wildlife refuge closed to public access. In summer they host large breeding colonies of seabirds, including tufted puffins, common murres, cormorants, and gulls. Isolation from mainland predators makes these stacks and islets critical, protected nesting habitat along the Pacific Flyway.
Those rocky islands scattered offshore aren't empty. Nearly all of them are a national wildlife refuge, off-limits to people, and in summer they roar with life: tens of thousands of seabirds packed onto every ledge to raise their young. Tufted puffins with their clownish orange bills, common murres standing shoulder to shoulder like little penguins, gulls and cormorants by the thousand. Cut off from foxes and raccoons by a moat of cold surf, the birds nest safe out there. What looks like bare rock from the highway is, in season, one of the busiest seabird nurseries on the whole coast.
Photo: TRinaud · CC BY 4.0
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