BARENTS SEA, July 15. /TASS/. The Arctic Floating University expedition experts saw northern booby between the Pechora and Barents Seas, opposite the Kanin Peninsula. This location is much to the east from the regular range, a TASS correspondent reported from aboard the Professor Molchanov scientific expedition vessel. A similar case was registered in 2022.
The booby is a large white bird with a yellow head and narrow long wings.
"It was trying to escape a chasing skua, which hoped the booby would regurgitate fish for it. The skua probably was too insisting, it flew away, landed on the sea, would not fly away, which means that was a good place. The booby waited for the bothering to stop," Maria Gavrilo, a leading researcher at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute described the situation to TASS. "Skuba's behavior is of a kleptoparasite - a form of foraging unique to this group. When a bird, a very good flyer, believes it is more profitable to chase a more successful hunter, it forces the other bird to regurgitate food and picks it up right on the fly or off water."
Boobies in the Arctic have been registered since the late 20th century. The bird was first recorded in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea in 1961, and the first colony in Russia was found on the Kharlov Island on the Kola Peninsula in 1996. "And since it started nesting in the Kandalaksha [Nature] Reserve, it was tracked simply by the days when the first birds appeared, how they laid eggs, when first chicks appeared, and how the colony was growing," the ornithologist explained. By 2019, the colony on the Kharlov Island featured 300 pairs of boobies.
In 2018, a second colony was found on a small island near the Rybachy Peninsula. It was found by chance. Tourists reported the find.
A sign of Atlantication
The northern booby's core range is the northeastern Atlantic. Huge colonies are known in the British Isles. The bird has been following the fish eastward. This is a manifestation of climate warming, which in that part of the Arctic is called Atlantication, since warm waters enter the Barents Sea from the Atlantic. The booby has been seen near a bottom uplift, where deep waters rise to the surface and carry out nutrients. In such places, biological productivity is higher, thus there is more fish for boobies there.
"This is definitely not a breeding individual from known colonies. For the bird, it would be a too big forage spread from the Kharlov colony," the expert said. "As for any new nesting sites - we do not yet know whether there is nesting on Novaya Zemlya or on the Kanin - this is an unlikely assumption, at least no one has seen it near Novaya Zemlya. That would've been a too big "leap" for it."
Arctic Floating University - 2024
On June 25, the Arctic Floating University departed from Arkhangelsk to conduct research in the White and Barents Seas, on the Kolguev Island, on islands of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land.
The project's partners and sponsors are the Arkhangelsk Region's government, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Russian Geographical Society, VTB Bank, Norilsk Nickel, Roshydromet (the hydrometeorology service), the Russian Arctic National Park, the Floating University Coordination Center at MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; also known as PhysTech), the Nauka (Science) year-round youth educational center.
The Arctic Floating University's expeditions continue under the Science and Universities national project, implemented by Russia's Ministry of Science and Higher Education.