Fish Out of Water, The story of Maine's Puffins

Some weeks back I posted a review of the film "Opposable Chums: Guts and Glory at the World Series of Birding" by independent filmmaker, Jason Kessler. Since that time, I've been wanting to write a bit about another independently-made film I saw a few years ago that I know would be of great interest to birders.


"Fish out of Water" by Daniel Breton is a fantastic documentary about the Atlantic Puffins in the Gulf of Maine, and the recovery efforts by Steve Kress and the Puffin Project to bring them (and other seabirds like Razorbills) back to traditional nesting sites like Eastern Egg Rock and Machias Seal Island. I first saw this film a few years back when I spent a very rainy weekend out on Appledore Island in the Isle of Shoals. One of the guys from the banding station (Anthony Hill) had a vhs copy that we watched one evening, and I knew it was something I needed to get my hands on. I got the filmmakers info from Tony and contact him a while later to see if I could order a copy on DVD. (This was in 2004 and my vhs player had broken and I never replaced it.) At the time, Dan didn't have any copies on DVD for sale, but for a reasonable price, he would make me one. I readily agreed. Skipping ahead about 6 months, I am at a NH Audubon Seacoast Chapter board meeting and we are discussing who we could ask as speakers for our meetings. I thought that having Dan do a presentation would be a great, so I e-mailed him again asking if he would be interested. He hadn't done anything like it before, but was happy that people were interested, and said he would do it. To this day, I think that was the best birding meeting that I ever attended. Daniel was great - very talented, smart, funny, and excited to share his experiences with the puffins as well as his techniques for getting some of the amazing shots that he did. (He was the first to get footage of puffins in their burrows, on eggs, and feeding chicks that hadn't yet fledged - very exciting to see) I think he enjoyed it as much as we did. He even donated a copy or two of the film to auction for fundraisers for the club.
The film is available on DVD these days, and I've since bought a few more copies for friends. (I've kept the first copy he burned from his computer for myself!)
Now that I've given you my personal background with this film, you can already guess that I am going to give this a great review. The history of the restoration of these seabird colonies is fascinating, and Dan does a great job of weaving information about the puffins together with simply amazing footage. By all means, check out his company's website, find out a bit more info about the film, and get yourself a copy.

While you are at it, you can also check out other information on Project Puffin here.

Go on, you know you want to. I mean, come on - who doesn't love puffins?