Free Republic

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...

from the July 31, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0731/p01s04-woeu.html Drifting rubber duckies chart oceans of plasticBy Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor PARIS - Theirs is an epic tale of resilience and pluck, a seafarer's yarn of high-seas adventure that has seen them brave some of the world's wildest waters in their 11-year odyssey from the Pacific Ocean toward landfall in Europe.They have bobbed through storms that would have wrecked larger vessels, to drift deliberately down the Bering Strait. They have patiently borne a four-year spell trapped in Arctic ice packs, to float freely into the...