The Storm We Cannot See

People once believed that storm petrels carried the souls of drowned sailors in their breasts. The birds would follow ships and were thought to be a divine warning of oncoming storms. It was bad luck to kill a petrel, and the most superstitious sailors claimed that doing so doomed the entire crew.

Today, storm petrels are dying in record numbers, their population has halved in the past 30 years and no one is completely sure why.

Petrels are what is known as an ‘indicator species’ and their disappearance is a giant warning about the health of our oceans

*Originally aired on BBC's Short Cuts March 2022*

You can find the original broadcast HERE