Oceanographer - Plastic Toy Ducks May Reach Britain This Summer After Crossing Arctic Ocean

[hatrack]

A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain's beaches, according to an American oceanographer who has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys since they were washed off a cargo ship in a container 15 years ago.

For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.

Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are now expected to reach Britain this summer, after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Mr Ebbesmeyer, who is based in Seattle, said yesterday that those that had not been trapped in circulating currents in the North Pacific, crushed by icebergs or blown ashore in Japan are bobbing across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream.

EDIT

http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20070529124751ymnews.html

[seemunkee]

1. Go Ducks Go

There was a container of Nikes that was washed off decks a number of years ago. The shoes were washing up on the Northern Cali, Oregan, and Wash state coast for quite a while.

[phantom power]

2. Eric Carle wrote a children's book about those ducks.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FH1534NYL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Rubber-Ducks-Eric-Carle/dp/0007202423/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-3221484-5879133?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183142280&sr=8-1

[damntexdem]

3. Oh, the horror of it!

I bet those Brits will put them in their bathtubs and bathe with them!