Penguin out of order

[Donna]

Here's the map of how far Happy Feet has traveled since being released. The red is the release point. I don't know how to read this, maybe Paul can help. Not sure the miles he's gone.

Today's map! Not sure where he is going. Where will he rest? Well he traveled 3000 miles to get to NZ, I'm sure this is a shorter route. They have a contest for the kids schools to guess where HF will be on day 50?? That is a long time to get to Antarctica! Poor guy! Wish he could have gone with Jeff on the Plane!

[nwfloridafalconfan]

This shows him going in the right general direction. By the scale of miles and my rough measurements, he's gone about 60 miles as the penguin swims, but only about 40 miles as the crow flies.

http://www.afn.org/~afn02552/happyfeet/track_happy_feet_090611_1054.jpg

http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx

[Donna]

This shows him going in the right general direction. By the scale of miles and my rough measurements, he's gone about 60 miles as the penguin swims, but only about 40 miles as the crow flies.

http://www.afn.org/~afn02552/happyfeet/track_happy_feet_090611_1054.jpg

http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx

OK, wow, he's in no hurry! Thanks

[nwfloridafalconfan]

From: http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx                                                                 

Happy Feet's progress

7 September 2011

Our bird has made a gain of 22 kms further toward home over the last 24 hours, a good performance pushing pretty much southward. More pertinently he’s also put an additional 6kms between him and the sandy beaches of Campbell island overnight. He seems to be swimming between 2-3 kph today, a bit slower than yesterday – this includes an hour when he seemed to get distracted and put on no distance at all. Wonder what’s caught his interest?

[Donna]

From: http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx                                                                 

Happy Feet's progress

7 September 2011

Our bird has made a gain of 22 kms further toward home over the last 24 hours, a good performance pushing pretty much southward. More pertinently he’s also put an additional 6kms between him and the sandy beaches of Campbell island overnight. He seems to be swimming between 2-3 kph today, a bit slower than yesterday – this includes an hour when he seemed to get distracted and put on no distance at all. Wonder what’s caught his interest?

Maybe some more penguins?

[nwfloridafalconfan]

Looks like he's hit a westerly current and is going with the flow.

[Donna]

Our Far South
The drifter buoys near Campbell Island move east-northeast an avg of 10.5km/day. Therefore if Happy Feet had not been swimming, he would now be about 42km E-NE of his release point.

It is four days since the world’s most famous penguin escaped down the stern ramp of the Tangaroa. After two months of intense scrutiny, you might think that he was slipping into the obscurity of being a speck in the great southern ocean, and the anonymity of being one of over 300,000 emperor penguins on the planet. No such luck! Thanks to the Sirtrack KiwiSat 202 satellite transmitter glued to his back, his every move is watched by millions of adoring spheniscophiles around the world. But that is hyperbole; the duty cycle of the transmitter has it turned on for only 7 hours per day. This means that for 17 hours a day he can swim wherever he likes without anyone telling him that he is swimming in the wrong direction (as long as he ends up further south when the transmitter turns on again).
What does his track tell us after 96 hours? Overall, he has travelled about 100 km in a south-easterly direction, travelling at a rate of about 1.2 km per hour (29.3 km per day). But where would he have ended up if he had floated passively on the surface, allowing currents to carry him like inanimate flotsam? We have the answer to that due to the known movements of 30 Global Drifter Program buoys that have passed near Campbell Island (data from NIWA).

Campbell Island sits in the path of the mightiest oceanic current on the planet, far more massive than the Amazon River. Driven by strong westerly winds, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current south of New Zealand flows eastward at a rate of nearly 150 million cubic metres per second. This is about 150 times the water flow of all the world’s rivers combined.
On average, the drifter buoys near Campbell Island moved in an east-northeast direction at an average rate of 10.5 km per day. This means that if the penguin had not been actively swimming, he would now be about 42 km east-northeast of his release point. If passive movement due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is allowed for, the distance that the emperor penguin has travelled by active swimming is approximately 91 km in a south-southeast direction at a rate of 1.1 km per hour (26.9 km per day).

If he keeps on this track and speed, he will reach the pack ice off Marie Byrd Land (between the Ross Sea and the Amundsen Sea) about the end of November. Will he find other emperor penguins there? Yes – as the attached map shows, there are two known and two probable emperor penguin colonies along this remote stretch of the Antarctic coast. The probable colonies have never been visited by humans; they were discovered by satellite imagery detecting fecal staining on the fast-ice, known to be characteristic of emperor penguin colonies.
This strong easterly drift also raises the question of where the peripatetic Peka Peka penguin came from. If he travelled as far east as he did north on his way to New Zealand, then it is likely that he came from one of the colonies in the Australian Antarctic sector, rather than from one of the cluster of colonies on the western side of the Ross Sea.

[nwfloridafalconfan]

From: http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx

Happy Feet's progress

8 September 2011

End of Day 4 and the bird is a further 8 kms closer to the Ross Sea. He’s headed more east today than previous days when he’s been heading southeast. He’s also not covered so many kms, suggesting he’s been spending more time just sitting in the tide. Maybe it’s time for a feed or he’s chasing the ladies.

[Donna]

Our Far South
End of Day 5 and for the 2nd day HF has traveled due east with no southerly progress. Wind and tide appear to be in the ascendancy. We've been told there are plenty of fish around, so perhaps chasing a meal.   

[nwfloridafalconfan]

9 September 2011

[Donna]

That's one CRAZY penguin!! LOL He's all over the place.

[Lynne in New Hampshire]

That's probably why he got lost in the first place!!!!!

[Donna]

That's probably why he got lost in the first place!!!!!

Probably Lynne!   

[nwfloridafalconfan]

From: http://www.ourfarsouth.org/Track-Happy-Feet.aspx

Update 11 Sep 11 - Why are there no new Happy Feet updates since 2011-09-08 20:11?  The satellite that tracks Happy Feet is currently not working due to a spate of Solar Flares over the last 4 days. We will keep you updated with any changes.

[Donna]

Our Far South
The transmitter has appeared to stop transmitting. This could be due to a number of reasons, but it may not be due to interference from the solar flares as previously speculated. There are a number of reasons this may have happened - transmitter falling off, transmitter damage, technical failure etc. Our view is the most likely scenario is the transmitter has fallen off. After all it was only glued on and would have had to survive extreme conditions.

Our Far South
It will be at least a couple of days before we know for sure that the transmitter is no longer working. Hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised. But if we don't get further readings then we'll have to hope for the best and be thankful that we've had such a wonderful cause to raise peoples' awareness of the Far South.

It is unlikely that we will ever know what caused the transmissions to cease, but it is time to harden up to the reality that the penguin has returned to the anonymity from which he emerged on 20 June. The Sirtrack team will keep trying to recover a signal, and we will post an update if they succeed. And maybe, just maybe, he will surprise us all by turning up at a monitored emperor penguin colony, where the transponder inserted under the skin on his thigh will remind us all that once upon a time, a long time ago, he was more than just another penguin.

(This is not good), we'll probably never know what happened to Happy Feet.