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).

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.

[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.

[khedron the jester]

*ducks*

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: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

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?!?

Re:£50 bounty, for a duck?

[Hanners1979]

Collect them all, and win a PlayStation 3!