From Pole to Pole

The Arctic Council Working Group CAFF CBird group has coordinated a project which provides astonishing new information on the wonders of animal migration. The results of the project have been revealed in a recent paper in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An international research team found that the Arctic tern flies an incredible 70,000+ km on its annual migration trip from Pole to Pole - the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back over its lifetime.

The researcher team, with scientists from Greenland, Denmark, the United States, Great Britain, and Iceland, has successfully mapped the impressive migratory movements of the Arctic tern. The results of the study verify what has been supposed for decades: that the Arctic tern does indeed conduct the longest annual migration in the world. Every year this small seabird travels an average of around 71,000 km roundtrip from Greenland to the Weddell Sea, on the shores of Antarctica, and back to the breeding grounds in Greenland.

The research results not only confirmed the Arctic tern as the champion of long-distance migration, but also held a few surprises in store for the research team. It turns out that the birds do not immediately travel south, but spent almost a month in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 1,000 km north of the Azores. After this lengthy stop over, the birds continued their long journey south down the coast of northwest Africa, but around the Cape Verde Islands the birds behavior surprised the researcher team again. Approximately half of the birds continued down the coast of Africa, while the other half crossed the Atlantic Ocean to follow a parallel route south down the east coast of South America.

All of the birds spent the northern winter months in Antarctic waters. Interestingly, on their long return journey the birds did not choose the shortest route back to their breeding grounds in Greenland. Instead, the Arctic terns traced out a gigantic „S‟ pattern northward across the Atlantic Ocean - a detour of several thousand kilometers.

CAFF Chair Aevar Petersen was one of the authors of the Arctic Tern Migration Project.