Oceanographer’s book tracks ocean currents through floating debris
Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science
by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano
Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins Publishers, New York, N.Y. $26.99, hardcover, 286 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-155841-2 (2009).
Reviewed by Lee Bumsted
At first glance, plastic bathtub toys, Nike sneakers and messages in bottles might not appear to have much in common. Yet oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer recognized a chance to use them all as drift markers and educational tools. He derives valuable data about how ocean currents circulate based on where and when such flotsam, or debris, washes up on shores around the world.
Ebbesmeyer has found that rubber duckies and sneakers lost off container ships have a way of capturing the public’s attention. He has used them over the past two decades to illustrate the persistence of plastics and other floating trash in the oceans. Now, along with science writer Eric Scigliano, he has written Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science.
On May 27, 1990, a cargo ship crossing the Pacific encountered a severe storm. Twenty-one containers were knocked off its deck, including five holding 78,932 Nike shoes. In late 1990 and into 1991, thousands of these shoes, in surprisingly good condition, started turning up on the beaches of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The Nike corporation provided the shoes’ point of entry and beachcombers reported their finds. Ebbesmeyer was able to use this data to model the paths of North Pacific currents. (He recounts how one enterprising scavenger acted as a clearinghouse to help people swap individual shoes to make matched, wearable pairs.)
Two years after the “sneaker spill,” another flotsam bonanza occurred when distinctive plastic turtles, frogs, beavers, and ducks started washing up in Sitka, Alaska. Ebbesmeyer again appealed to beachcombers to report what they found, and fully 3.3 percent of the lost shipment was accounted for. This provided another set of data on currents.
Flotsametrics and the Floating World is a slightly disjointed mix of science, memoir and flotsam history. The science includes highlights of Ebbesmeyer’s research and descriptions of the world’s eleven major oceanic gyres. He defines an oceanic gyre as a “continental-scale closed loop of water around which flotsam drifts.” The smallest, in the Arctic Ocean, is 1000 nautical miles in diameter; the two largest, in the South Pacific, are each 5000 nautical miles across.
He describes eight huge floating “garbage patches” (a term he coined in the early 1990’s) found within some of the gyres. The patches consist of drifting flotsam as well as natural materials such as wood and seaweed. The patches cover water surfaces more than twice the size of the United States.
 |
| Author Curtis Ebbesmeyer sits on his front porch, surrounded by memorable flotsam: A Japanese fishing float, a Tommy Pickles Rugrat doll’s head, a Nike cross-trainer, and tub toys lost in container spills. Photograph by Dave Ingraham. |
Scattered through the book are tales of Ebbesmeyer’s professional and family life, along with stories of his friendships with scientists and other flotsam enthusiasts. Combine these stories with the photo of him in a hot tub full of recovered plastic toys, and you get the sense he would be an entertaining dinner companion.
Ebbesmeyer offers a history of flotsam through the ages. In one chapter, he reports that millions of messages in bottles have been launched. Some bottles carried messages from evangelists, others government propaganda, and yet others letters from emigrants to family members left behind. In another chapter, he proposes that Christopher Columbus may have factored in observations of drifting terrestrial plants and floating debris to set his course for the new world.
While there are humorous elements to Flotsametrics and the Floating World, it concludes with some somber cautions. In addition to reviewing problems associated with flotsam pollution, Ebbesmeyer warns that rapid climate change could disrupt the harmony of the major oceanic gyres, with unknown but possibly significant negative consequences. It is his hope that children, who have learned about oceanic gyres and garbage patches through the travel of errant plastic ducks and sneakers, will grow up to demand that we take better care of the oceans.
Print
