Thousands of Rubber Ducks to Finally End Journey

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.'"

Comments

How can they identify one ducky from another?

[apathy maybe]

I think I've just come up with a new money making scheme!

1) Goto shop and purchase large amounts of rubber duckies
2) Emerse them in water and ice for a few years and so
3) Sell them to this company for 50 pounds each
4) Profit!

More seriously, maybe scientists should be getting more brightly coloured floating objects and chucking them in the sea at various points. What about red for Russia (two types, one for each coast), yellow for (no I won't go there...) and various other colours for other countries.

A great way to learn more about ocean currents.

But they would get into trouble with (some) environmentalists, maybe they need to just "accidentally" knock a few more crates overboard?

Re:How can they identify one ducky from another?

[Silver Sloth]

But they would get into trouble with (some) environmentalists, maybe they need to just "accidentally" knock a few more crates overboard? Only the completely stupid ones. As far as I'm concerned you can pour as many chemically inert (well, Ok - relatively inert) plastic ducks as are needed into where ever they are required. It's the untreated sewage/industrial waste that I object to (and plastic bags because they look like jellyfish to whales and leatherback turtles).

Re:How can they identify one ducky from another?

[91degrees]

The type of duck is quite specific, and it has the comapny name stamped on it. The thing about cheap plastic that that anyone can make is that there are literally thousands of variations, and the scientists are only interested in one breed. Different plastic, differnt sizes, different designs.

Re:How can they identify one ducky from another?

[whatme]

There is a old phrase in the chemical and industrial sector

Dilution is the solution to pollution.

In fact, in some municipalities, waste into the sewer system is allowed below a certain concentration, but get above that concentration and get fined. So you can (and some do) simply add water when dumping stuff down the drain. Environmentally this makes little sense as it's the same amount of "bad stuff" going down the drain, but in the allowed case you're also "wasting" lots of water. (this ignores the issue of high concentrations being bad for the piping system of course).

this will eventually turn into a pixar movie.

[satyakam]

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

Re:this will eventually turn into a pixar movie.

[ceeam]

That or Michael Moore documentary.

Re:this will eventually turn into a pixar movie.

[WIAKywbfatw]

That or Michael Moore documentary.

I think you mean a duckumentary...

(I thank you, I thank you. Don't forget to tip your waitresses, etc.)

Re:this will eventually turn into a pixar movie.

[Gryle]

Quack comedian.

Re:this will eventually turn into a pixar movie.

[khedron the jester]

*ducks*

£50 bounty, for a duck?

[tehSpork]

What a bunch of quacks...

It's a pretty cool story though (shock, someone actually read TFA). I'm sure that we've learned a lot more about oceanic patterns from those plastic toys than we have from a lot of other (more expensive) methods employed in the past.

Re:£50 bounty, for a duck?

[RuBLed]

22,000 rubber ducks = ~3 million US dollars

Who wants to go to an Artic Expedition, we're mining ducks....

Re:£50 bounty, for a duck?

[Hanners1979]

Collect them all, and win a PlayStation 3!

Re:£50 bounty, for a duck?

[edittard]

Umm, the ducks float.

Then they must be witches. Burn them!!!

1. Train ticket to West Country 2.Profit!!

[fantomas]

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....

This is actually interesting...

[Flying pig]

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.

Re:This is actually interesting...

[Don_dumb]

Thanks for the post, I saw "the daily mail is reporting" and didn't even think of reading the article. It turned out to be quite interesting despite me spending the whole time reading it thinking - how are they going to make this a "Thousands of Chinese immigrants ready wash onto UK shores - Labour to blame" story

Re:This is actually interesting...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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...

Re:This is actually interesting...

[Shakrai]

Talk about giving everybody the worst possible guide of everyday British life...

That's ok, it's not like we American's don't have anything to be embarrassed about either ;)

Welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

As a native of the South-West of England I for one welcome our new faded yellow Chinese rubber duck overlords.

Harper's article on the floatees

[Tim]

Harper's did a long article on these in the January 2007 issue. If you're a subscriber, you can go to http://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081345 to read it.

Also, if you're interested in this stuff, you might want to check out Ebbesmeyer's website and newsletter about beachcombing: http://beachcombersalert.org/

Re:Harper's article on the floatees

[Anonymous Coward]

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

New Scientists take on this press release

[nietsch]

Why in Chtlus name a link to the daily mail? I got sick from all the pictures of bikini clad babes that were supposedly famous (oh! she broke her leg while doing house chores) FCS dress up or take it all off (&make that porn movie)....

So here is the link to a more sensible website:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn1216 8-uk-on-alert-for-plastic-duck-invasion.html

Re:New Scientists take on this press release

[jollyreaper]

Why in Chtlus name a link to the daily mail? I got sick from all the pictures of bikini clad babes that were supposedly famous (oh! she broke her leg while doing house chores) FCS dress up or take it all off (&make that porn movie)....

So here is the link to a more sensible website:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn1216 8-uk-on-alert-for-plastic-duck-invasion.html [newscientist.com] Jeff Foxworthy voice...

You might be a paleneck if:

You complain about pics of scantily-clad babes distracting you from the article about frozen rubber duckies.

Old News

[Suit]

Nike got there first with shoes that had serial numbers to allow tracking across the globe.

In late May of 1990, the container vessel Hansa Carrier encountered a severe storm in the north Pacific Ocean (~48N, 161W) on its passage from Korea to the United States. During the storm, a large wave washed twenty-one shipping containers overboard. Five of these 20-metre containers held a shipment of approximately 80,000 Nike shoes ranging from children's shoes to large hiking boots. It has been estimated that four of the five containers opened into the stormy waters, releasing over 60,000 shoes into the north Pacific Ocean.

As an inhabitant of South West England

[Flying pig]

I can't help thinking that they can't be any worse than our local District Council. The ducks are mostly going in the same direction, and not spending all their time in in-fighting. What's more, they've spent the last 15 years doing useful scientific research instead of allowing unrestricted development in towns and blocking anything that might cause a rich NIMBY from London to have to look at a house belonging to someone else.

Yes, replacing the Council with faded yellow Chinese rubber ducks might actually be an improvement.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So this is how it ends *sniff*

[Agilus]

You were a great band, Journey! Who could have known that you would be mobbed and killed by thousands of rubber ducks!?!? What did you do to deserve this fate?!?

Next up: Lava Ducks

[chiph]

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.

Taking a blind dump?

[Gription]

And even if it was "carefully" dumped the problem is that we don't stop after getting it nice and diluted. We keep dumping a large quantity of carefully diluted pollutants into an extremely low energy ecosystem. In addition of sources of energy into a low energy ecosystem causes an extreme change in that ecosystem.

Oh, and if you 'carefully dilute' something into the ocean by what process do you propose that you keep it from becoming undiluted? Life forms are the most efficient way to aggregate dilute substances.

Actually this is one of the dumbest, "If I can't see anything it must not be happening" suggestions I have ever heard.
THINK! Did it work for landfills? 'But we did such a good job of hiding it under the dirt and I can't see it there!' (Of course my well is contaminated now and I have to pipe water in...)

Re:Moby Dick doesn't have an outhouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. Where do you think all the fish in the sea go to shit?

A. The water closet!

Google Earth/Maps

[ehicks727]

You'd think you could spot tens of thousands of brightly colored rubber ducks on Google Earth/Maps, ya think? Anyone have links?