Week-long foraging trip from the Channel Islands to Scandinavian waters and back is the longest recorded for the species, conservationists say

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A gannet has returned home after a fishing trip of almost 1,700 miles (2,700 km), the longest recorded for the species, conservationists said.

Cosmo, a northern gannet which lives on Alderney in the Channel Islands, made the foraging trip up the English Channel, across the North Sea and into Scandinavian waters - and back - in less than a week.

His journey of around 1,680 miles was tracked using a tag which sends live data through the 3G mobile network.

It is well above the usual 200 to 300 miles gannets travel on their fishing trips, and is thought to be the longest northern gannet foraging trip recorded.

The bird is one of a number of northern gannets being tracked with the transmitters in a project by Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the University of Liverpool to assess their foraging habits.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cosmo the gannet on Alderney in the Channel Islands. Photograph: Alderney Wildlife Trust/PA

Claire Thorpe of AWT said: “This is very exciting news for our track-a-gannet project and the information will be hugely important for the conservation of our wonderful seabirds.

“Data like this is really important because it shows that we need international collaborative effort to protect our seabird species and monitor developments in the Channel and beyond.”

The track-a-gannet scheme was prompted by the increase in renewable energy projects planned for the Channel, with concerns that schemes such as the Rampion windfarm off the coast of Brighton could have direct impacts on birds such as gannets.

Around 8,500 breeding pairs of northern gannets, around 2% of the world’s population, nest in two colonies on rocky offshore islets in Alderney, at the southerly end of the bird’s range.

Last year a study tracking gannets nesting on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, Scotland, warned that the seabirds could be at much greater risk from offshore wind turbines than previously thought, owing to the height at which they fly.