BARENTS SEA, June 28. /TASS/. The Arctic Floating University expedition for the second year in a row met Northern gannet at the White Sea Throat, which is much to the east from the bird's usual range, a TASS correspondent reported from aboard the Professor Molchanov scientific/research vessel.

The bird flew up to the ship and circled over it. A year earlier, at about the same place, the expedition members saw a young gannet. Gannet is a large white bird with a yellow head and narrow long wings. "This suggests that gannet has settled quite far to the east beyond its usual range, it contributes to the process of Atlantic changes in the Barents Sea. The very fact that for the second year in a row we meet it at about the same location proves that it has quite embedded into the local ecosystem," Irina Pokrovskaya, a senior researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to TASS.

Gannet lives along the Gulf Stream from America to Europe. In the Arctic, scientists began to notice it in the second half of the 20th century. The first colony was found on the Kharlov Island in the Kandalaksha Nature Reserve on the Kola Peninsula. According to the expert, the bird that the expedition met, most likely may have come from that nature reserve.

The "Atlanticization" process, that is Atlantic-influenced changes, is associated with warmer waters from the Atlantic Ocean coming into the Arctic. The waters bring fish. The fish is followed by birds feeding on it, including gannet. "Gannet is moving actively both to the east and to the north, and not only in this country. In Norway, the bird has been nesting on the Bear Island, which is the middle between Europe and Spitsbergen, it is very far to the north," she said, adding ornithologist Valery Andreev from Arkhangelsk had suggested a gannet colony on the Kanin Peninsula. "Unfortunately, we still cannot verify this, as ornithologists haven't visited the Kanin Peninsula in recent years, like many other remote territories, due to a lack of special opportunities."

Pokrovskaya and Yuri Suetin, a graduate student at the Northern Arctic Federal University (NAFU), during the Floating University's expedition conduct constant observations of seabirds. Eight volunteers - students and other researchers - assist them in the observations.

The Arctic Floating University is a joint project of the Northern Arctic Federal University (NAFU) and the Northern Branch for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring. The expeditions continue since 2012. The project's partners and sponsors are the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic, VTB, Novatek, Norilsk Nickel, the Arkhangelsk Region's government, the Russian Geographical Society.