A woman was walking her dog along a beach in New Zealand in late June when she saw something that looked like a white ball in the sand. It turned out to be a young Emperor penguin that was lost. At his age, he should have been close to Antarctic, swimming for fish and playing on the ice floes . But this penguin started swimming north and just kept going. The penguin attracted a lot of attention in New Zealand. It has been 40 years since an Emperor penguin was last seen there. Researchers at the Department of Conservation were called in. They decided to watch the penguin closely, but not to disturb it in any way. Many New Zealanders came to Peka Peka Beach to look at the elegant penguin. They were careful to keep their dogs away from it so it wouldn't be frightened. The public nicknamed the animal Happy Feet. Researchers started to notice that Happy Feet didn't seem well. It turns out that he had been eating the sand from the beach, likely thinking it was snow. The public raised more than 11,000 pounds for an operation to get the sand out of his stomach. The operation was a success, and Happy Feet was taken to a zoo in Wellington, NZ. A group of experts met to decide how to help Happy Feet return to the wild. Last Sunday, they put him on a boat called the Tangaroa, in a specially built ice-filled box and took him out into the Southern Ocean, southeast of New Zealand. There, they released him into the ocean, which is his natural habitat. He took one last look at his human helpers and then dived into the ocean. "Emperor penguins spend their first five years at sea," said Peter Simpson of New Zealand's Department of Conservation. " What happens now is up to the penguin." Happy Feet was fitted with a satellite transmitter so they can monitor his progress using the Internet. So far, the trackers shows that he swam northeast for a little while before getting his bearings and heading south. Where is the young penguin supposed to appear?
On the sunny beach. Near the Antarctic. Inside the hole in the ice. In the depths of the ocean.