Dr Annette Fayet
About
Annette Fayet is a seabird biologist at the University of Oxford. She grew up in France where she studied engineering before moving to Oxford for postgraduate studies and is currently a junior research fellow at Queen’s College and a member of the Department of Biology.
Dr Fayet is passionate about seabirds, the world’s most accomplished travellers but also the most endangered group of birds on Earth, facing threats like overfishing, climate change, and marine pollution. Seabirds spend most of their lives at sea but little is known about what they do out in the ocean. Dr Fayet uses miniature tracking loggers to observe them and record their movements and behaviour. She wants to understand what drives seabirds’ movements (from feeding trips around their breeding colony to long-distance migrations across open oceans), why populations are declining, and how climate change will affect them.
Her research directly applies to seabird conservation by identifying important marine areas for their survival that need to be protected. Currently Dr Fayet leads projects in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, focusing on puffins, shearwaters, and tropicbirds.
(Image credit: David Silverman)
Expertise
- Seabird migration and feeding ecology
- Effects of climate change on North Atlantic seabird populations
- Drivers of seabird population declines
Selected publications
- Local prey shortages drive foraging costs and breeding success in a declining seabird, the Atlantic puffin. Fayet AL, Clucas GV, Anker-Nilssen T, Syposz M, & Hansen ES (Journal of Animal Ecology 90(5): 1152-1164, 2021)
- Ocean-wide drivers of migration strategies and their influence on population breeding performance in a declining seabird. Fayet AL, Freeman R, Anker-Nilssen T, Diamond AW, Erikstad KE, Fifield DA, Fitzsimmons MG, Hansen ES, Harris MP, et al (2017)
Media experience
Dr Annette Fayet has experience of newspapers, radio and TV interviews. This includes through her research at the University of Oxford and with the National Geographic and Sky as a National Geographic Explorer and a former Sky Ocean Rescue Scholar.
Recent media work
- 'Rare video shows puffin using stick as a tool - to scratch an itch' - coverage of research (Independent, 2019)
- National Geographic Explorer Spot: video about research project investigating drivers of puffin population decline (2020)
- BBC Radio 4 #PlanetPuffin podcast (2019)
- Article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine covering research project on Puffins and Climate Change “Von fliegenden Fischern”
- 'Why Are Puffins Vanishing? The Hunt for Clues Goes Deep (Into Their Burrows) - coverage of research (New York Times, 2018)
- 'Does Wales hold the key for saving the puffin from extinction?' BBC TV interview, research on puffin population declines (2018)
Languages
English, French