The animals unveiled!

Following extensive(!) public participation from a community of animal lovers, it was decided that migratory birds were, the uh, best. Of course they are biased in favour of birds (it is a bird community after all), so I've decided to track both a greater Shearwater called Sedna and a cool baby loggerhead turtle called Zahara.

Zahara, our turtle, according to seaturtle.org: ... was discovered nesting during the early morning hours of 20 August 2006. She measured 97.0cm in curved carapace length and was released with her satellite tag on 20 August 2006.(source)

Image courtesy of SeaTurtle.org

She was discovered and released on Masirah Island, Oman on her birthday, and by my reckoning is approaching 4 months of age. After birth she moved slowly southwards along the Arabian peninsula just offshore. Then after moving briefly closer to shore during the middle-end of September, she has started to slowly spiral her way back out to deeper waters. She is currently some 100km offshore from the border of Oman/Yemen.

Sedna, our shearwater made her way from the upper reaches of NE United States during September down to their winter feeding grounds in the Southern hemisphere. After a month or so recuperation off the coast of Southern Argentina, she has now moved to the centre of the Southern Atlantic Ocean somewhere near the British islands of Inaccessible and Nightingale, having travelled almost 22500km's!

Hopefully this blog will keep track of both over the coming period - but for now, I must get back to my revision! The joys of the electromagnetic spectrum!

(edit - seaturtle.org kindly gave me permission to use a few graphics)

Tracking animals in google earth..

Very Spatial links to a few sites that use satellites to track animals. Nothing new perhaps, but in the case of the loggerhead turtle, they are now using googlemaps to track these creatures potentially offering a wealth of interesting information to would be adopters. Another interesting site WhaleNet has a list of marine animals it keeps track off using satellite beacons. Most of this data isn't rendered 'live', but they certainly have interesting maps and other data.

It makes me wonder - we've been doing this for a long time, and there must be a whole host of data available. I think a lot of people would be seriously interested in tracking specific species or individual animals within google maps. It perhaps poses a bit of a moral question of using wild animals for 'recreation', but besides the obvious attachment of a sensor (which it can be argued is firstly for scientific purposes) , there is little impact on the creature's life.

I might choose an animal for this blog ..and we'll keep track of it. More soon.