Gannets hit the sea at 100 km/h, cushioned by built-in bubble wrap
A hunting gannet folds its wings and plunges from as high as 30 metres, striking the water at around 100 kilometres an hour. It survives that impact thanks to air sacs under the skin of its face and chest, and it has no external nostrils at all; they sit inside the mouth, where the sea cannot rush in.
Gannets are big white seabirds with yellowish heads, black wingtips and long bills. The three species belong to the genus Morus, close relatives of the boobies. The northern gannet is the North Atlantic's largest seabird, with wings spanning up to two metres, while the other two live in temperate waters around southern Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.
Their diving kit goes beyond the cushioning. Eyes set far enough forward for binocular vision let them judge distance precisely before a strike, and the speed of the plunge carries them deeper than most flying birds can reach, where they chase fish underwater. Their reputation for gulping vast amounts of fish turned the word gannet into slang for a greedy eater.
Names cling to them in odd ways. Gannet comes from an Old English word for gander. In Scotland they are called solan geese; guga, often mistaken for the Scottish name, is the Gaelic term for the chicks only. The Spanish word alcatraz gave its name to the famous San Francisco prison. And Morus comes from a Greek word for foolish, because breeding birds showed so little fear that they were easy to kill.
They nest in dense colonies on islands and coasts, usually laying a single chalky-blue egg, which they warm with their webbed feet since they lack brood patches. Young birds start out completely black and gain white over several years, maturing at about five. Roughly two-thirds of all northern gannets breed in the United Kingdom, mostly in Scotland, and Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth held about 75,000 pairs in 2014. Fossils show gannets were more diverse in the Late Miocene and Pliocene, when some lived nearer the equator.
Source: Gannet
