Long-Lost Rubber Duckies Head for British Beaches

A flotilla of rubber duckies, washed overboard from a container ship in the North Pacific in 1992, is about to invade Britain, according to an American oceanographer.

For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 Chinese-made plastic bath toys — yellow ducks, green frogs, blue turtles and red beavers — that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship during a storm.

Some of the bath toys, marketed in the U.S. as "Friendly Floatees," are expected to reach Britain 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.

Any beachcomber who finds one of the ducks or their kin will be able to claim a $100 reward from the toys' American distributor, The First Years Inc.

The ducks began life in a Chinese factory and were being shipped to the U.S. from Hong Kong when three 40-foot containers fell into the Pacific during a storm on Jan. 29, 1992.

Two-thirds of them floated south through the tropics, landing months later on the shores of Indonesia, Australia and South America.

But 10,000 headed north and by the end of the year were off Alaska and heading back westwards.

It took three years for the Friendly Floatees to circle counterclockwise east to Japan, past the original drop site and then back to Alaska on a current known as the North Pacific Gyre before continuing north towards the Arctic.

Many were stranded as the currents took them through the Bering Strait, which divides Alaska from Russia.

Two children's books have been written about the saga and the ducks have become collector's items, some changing hands for $1,000.

This is recycled, very old news. The Times is way behind the fair.

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the story, with bibliography, here. Another article published in 1999 not only includes the Friendly Floaties but also the origin of the OSCUR computer simulation - the Chinese message in the bottle and the Nike shoes that washed up on the beaches of Washington state and Oregon - here.

This is a great Moby Duck story! Thanks for posting it and bringing us up to date with what the folks on the British Isles will be looking out for when the armada hits their beaches this summer.

One summer I had a large group of kids practice writing a "friendly letter." We put those letters into wine bottles with return stamped postcards and had them dropped in various places in Long Island Sound by a fisherman who fishes 100+ miles out. All of the children received replys to their bottle messages within 4-6 months from places along the east coast ... all except this one sweet little girl. She was the most quiet in the group, the kind of kid who was never in trouble, and to me, most deserving of a reply, of any kid in the group. We talked about never giving up hope and ocean currents and dreaming of where her bottle might be. A year and a half later, my little friend found me and showed me a large envelope with a return address from Spain. Her bottle was found on a beach in El Rompido, Spain. I was able to immediately communicate with the gal who found the bottle message by email. The local papers picked up on the story and a very kind person donated a computer and internet service to the young student whose note traveled 3,400 miles so she could write to her new found friend across the pond.

This is a great summer activity for kids ...making your own message in a bottle. Be sure to launch it in the right spot with help from Greenpeace’s [argh!] Trash Vortex predictor. [If you are prone to epilepsy ... I suggest you not open this link!] And I couldn't find a east coast predictor.

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