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Thousands of Rubber Ducks to Finally End Journey

Posted by Zonk on from the born-free-as-free-as-the-wind-blows dept.

Bert de Jong writes "The Daily Mail reports that thousands of rubber ducks who have traveled the seas of the world since 1992 are about to end their journey. After escaping out of a container fallen off a Chinese freight ship in a storm, scientists have been followed them on their fifteen year trek. This has turned out to be an invaluable source of information for studying ocean currents. Now it seems inevitable though that they will finally land on the shores of South-West England. '[Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer] correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic. It proved true years later and in 2003, the first Friendly Floatees were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.'"

11 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. this will eventually turn into a pixar movie. by satyakam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks like a story tailor-made for a pixar movie. Sort of like a toy-story / finding-nemo mashup. -satyakam

  2. 1. Train ticket to West Country 2.Profit!! by fantomas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thousands washing up at 50 pounds a pop for returning them?

    1. Train ticket to West Country
    2. Beach scavenge
    3. Profit!!

    This will be more fun than when the Napoli beached off Branscombe! Easier to sneak plastic ducks off the beach than BMW motorbikes....

  3. This is actually interesting... by Flying+pig · · Score: 5, Interesting
    and amazing that it got a reasonable and sensible write up in the Daily Mail. Perhaps now Mr. Blair has departed the Mail will be less of a feral beast (that's a UK reference for those of you in the rest of the world, don't worry about it) and more of a newspaper.

    However, given the way the climate change deniers have been trying to rubbish oceanographers and meteorologists because of their agreement on inconvenient data, the fact that this guy predicted something as counter intuitive as the ducks traveling through a North-west passage in pack ice should give pause for thought.

    When even people like Dyson try and rubbish climatologists (presumably because he wants unrestricted space travel and they are warning that this is impossible without doing severe damage to the Earth) this sort of thing reminds us of just (1) how much these people know and (2) what a lot they still want to learn, while their opponents seem to rely on soundbites and dodgy statistics rather than science.

    --
    Pining for the fjords
    1. Re:This is actually interesting... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The most frightening thing about the Daily Mail (well, frightening to anybody with a social conscience) is that over half their online readership is from outside the UK. Talk about giving everybody the worst possible guide of everyday British life...

      --

      "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
    2. Re:This is actually interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "...given the way the climate change deniers have been trying to rubbish oceanographers ..."

      You can't be a climate change denier. Noone denies that the climate changes. What people deny is that anthropic global warming has been comprehensively proven. And given the maths of people like Mann, that's a pretty reasonable position.

      The global warming scare suffers from the fact that the world has been cooling ever since 1998. So they are trying to change their title to 'climate change' which undeniably exists, but is a meaningless concept. And with you, they seem to have caught at least one moron!

      For your information, the global warming scare is now in it's last days scientifically, as large holes are being picked in all the original assertions. The papers and the politicians will probably realise this in another five years or so!

    3. Re:This is actually interesting... by MadMidnightBomber · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sssh! We're actually exporting them; don't tell the Spanish government.

      --
      "It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
  4. Re:Wanna bet? by Goffee71 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    As a Bournemouth resident on the South-West of England - we've got seven miles of beach and about 21 square miles of sea to scan for these buggers... So I need a hi-res, hi-zoom camera with Duck recognition software built-in... any ideas? Note - this is better than the last cargo-container wreck on our shores which washed up tonnes of dog biscuits and shampoo... Further down the coast they got BMW motorbikes falling out the surf - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/6665465.s tm lucky swines!

    --
    If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
  5. Ebb by caluml · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer - that's quite a good name for someone who works with the sea.

    --
    Get your own free personal location tracker
  6. Re:Harper's article on the floatees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I prefer The Register's version myself for its ransacking of thesauri, plus that's one of the best URLs I've seen in a while:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/28/doomed_duc ks_sail_oceans_for_all_eternity

  7. Next up: Lava Ducks by chiph · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Imagine if you could create Asbestos Ducks that you'd drop into a subduction zone to trace the earth's magma currents.

    Of course, you'd have to wait a bit longer than 4 years for them to pop up at their destination...

    Chip H.

  8. Re:How can they identify one ducky from another? by gnuman99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sir, you are the second greatest moron I've read about on Slashdot.

    WTF do you think happens to shit put in the ocean? It DILUTES! It DILUTES so freaking great that now Tuna is full of Mercury and orcas (killer whales) are going nuts because of the DILUTED pollutants.

    The "dilution factor" works only if you have insignificant amount of pollution. Not cubic miles of shit dumped all over the place.

    Thank you, but your kind of thinking is why there is 10 TIMES as much plastic in the ocean than algae and phytoplankton.