This topic was posted , thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
Posted on 04/01/2019 3:32:17 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagna-loving cartoon cat coming from?
The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion.
From the stray curly wires and the occasional dial pad, it was clear that the pieces came from the once-popular Garfield telephone, which hit the shelves in the early 1980s, several years after Jim Davis first colored the famously lazy cat into his hit comic strip. The phone parts were in remarkable condition, considering they had been belched from the ocean, Claire Simonin-Le Meur, president of the environmental group Ar Viltansoù, told The Washington Post. Even Garfield’s black stripes were still painted onto his back, where the phone hooked.
She had been searching for the origin of Garfield for years, she said, out of concern for the damage the plastic phones may be doing to the ocean — and this month, after a chance encounter on the beach, she was about to get answers.
Simonin-Le Meur said the common belief among locals was that the phones came from a wayward shipping container that must have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, leaving environmentalists to fear Garfield’s plastic toxicity would continue to pollute the ocean indefinitely. In 2018 alone, at least 200 pieces of Garfield had been found on beaches in northwestern France, FranceInfo reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I ran across that in the last year. I was listening to a WWI BBC interview with a vet and he mentioned areas that were so bad back during the war that men would get sick just going near it. As an offhand comment, he mentioned "I don't think you can go there today". The interview was probably in the 70s. It made me curious and led me to "Zone Rouge".
See my reply in #20, please.
Already did, thanks!..................
Ditto.
There were 29,000 rubber ducks spilled in an accident, Pacific Ocean, 1992. The guys and gals behind this seized the oppertunity, as they never would have been given permission to conduct such an operation.
Some of the ducks made it to Ireland and Canada. Verified finds of these ducks has been dropping off.
A verified rubber duck from this lot is worth about $1,000 US.
Everything eventually ends up in the ocean. Everything.
The rubber duck tracking ... interesting. Maybe silly, but interesting, anyhow. I like the stories of messages in bottles - where they came from, how long the journey was, etc.
They used to dump out 1,000 bottle messages at single point time for same purpose. Probably still do.
The ducks fell off a cargo ship in a gale. No experiment of such scale would be permitted. If it was done in illicit manner, the results would be refused.
They got lucky.
Forgot to mention... that lot of rubber ducks did not vent... They all float, and are easy to spot. A normal rubber duck vents...
A 100 foot rubber duck caused a bit of confusion a while back when it was spotted on Google earth.
I am finding my knowledge of rubber ducks disturbing, on many levels.
You are we, as well.
“We” observe.
“I am finding my knowledge of rubber ducks disturbing, on many levels.”
I’ve always thought the variations of people’s useless knowledge is interesting and fun.
I don’t keep track of any ducks.
This topic was posted , thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
>>We still track a million or so yellow rubber ducks that pepper the oceans, from a lost container, 1992. They are helpful in tracking global sea surface currents.
If you find one on a beach, you can report it. There are sites still actively tracking.<<
I can think of a prank to pull...
C'mon ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
