new to the flock Posted July 21, 2007 Report Share Posted July 21, 2007 Dunked ducks among bath toys destined for British shores Last Updated: Friday, July 20, 2007 | 3:08 PM ET CBC News After floating through 35,000 kilometres of the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of plastic bath toys that went overboard 15 years ago are expected to wash up on British shores any day now. The toy turmoil began in 1992, when a storm in the Pacific Ocean blew several containers off a ship bound from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Wash. One container held 29,000 Friendly Floatees bathtub toys made by The First Years Inc. The yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs and red beavers — all stamped with the company's logo — are now likely bleached white. The dunked duckies and other plastic animals are well travelled. Shortly after going overboard, about two-thirds of them landed on the shores of Indonesia, Australia and South America. One group of the toys circled a current known as the north Pacific Gyre, between Japan and Alaska, five times. They've surfaced all over the world — to Maine, Hawaii, Indonesia, Australia, South American — and have been tracked in the north Atlantic area where the Titanic sank. In 2003, they were expected to wash up on shores in the U.S., prompting the toys' manufacturer to offer at the time a $100 US savings bond reward to anyone recovering a Floatee in New England, Canada or Iceland. According to oceanographers' predictions, the next stop for the toys are the shores of Britain, specifically southwest England, southern Ireland and western Scotland. Rubber ducks a collector's dream A Seattle-based oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, saw the lost plastic animals as an opportunity to investigate the paths of ocean currents, which he has been studying for over 40 years. He works with Jim Ingraham, who has created a computer simulation of ocean surface currents to make sense of the toy recoveries. The famed Floatees have reached folkloric proportions, with two children's books being written about them, and the recovered ducks have become collectors' items, fetching prices upwards of $1,000 US each. The two operate a website that calls upon beachcombers around the world to report any debris they recover, including the dumped Floatees. The recovery rate for missing objects from the Pacific Ocean is usually around two per cent, which means that a total of about 580 of the Floatees should eventually turn up. There are some estimates that up to 10,000 containers a year are lost from vessels going across the ocean. The vessels have been filled with various items, such as Nike sneakers — 80,000 were dumped into the Pacific in 1990, and they too are being tracked by Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnGalway Posted July 21, 2007 Report Share Posted July 21, 2007 Even though it's showery I think it's beach weather... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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