Wanted dead or alive: Rubber ducky
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by Miguel Llanos
The wanted bath toys have a unique signature: the words "The First Years" and the logo of the company by the same name. Source: Jim Ingram/NOAA Fisheries
SEATTLE (Oct. 3, 2003) –- There's a reward out for a yellow rubber ducky — a bounty that Curt Ebbesmeyer hopes will further the science of ocean currents and spread the word about ocean trash. Footing the bill, so to speak, is the company that made the ducks — 29,000 of them and other bathtub friends lost at sea 11 years ago when their shipping container went overboard in a storm.
Hundreds of the bath toys have washed up on North Pacific shores in recent years, particularly in Alaska, but computer projections indicate some might have made it to the North Atlantic coast and possibly even Africa by now.
It's not a huge reward — a $100 U.S. savings bond for any duck, frog, turtle or beaver from the shipment — but Ebbesmeyer hopes that'll be enough incentive for beachcombers to report finds and contribute to his research.
A Seattle-based beachcomber himself, Ebbesmeyer emphasizes that not just any animal bath toy will do. The ducks in particular are easy to mistake. "A lot escape from duck races by charities around the world," he says. "Those are bogus ducks" and often have blue glasses or red bills instead of the solid yellow color.
The bath toys floating since January 1992 have the words "the first years" inscribed on them. That's the name of the company that made the ducks and is now putting up the reward for any of the toys that show up in New England, Canada or Iceland through this summer.
The company is hoping that some of the toys might even find their way to Boston and its headquarters in nearby Avon. "We haven't retrieved any of the ducks, frogs, turtles or beavers that fell overboard," says spokeswoman Darlene Hollywood, "but we're anxiously waiting for them to come home."
Ebbesmeyer, the acknowledged expert on the toys and what condition they'd be in today, has been designated as the official arbiter should beachcombers find what they think is a toy from the lost shipment.
SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENTAL TIES
An oceanographic consultant, Ebbesmeyer also has been working with Jim Ingraham of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to track the bath toys with science in mind.
"We know so little about the oceans," Ebbesmeyer says, and the ducks offer a chance to learn.
Locating some strays has allowed them to establish distances traveled and that in turn has led them to better understand currents and how they affect fish migrations and other sea patterns.
Those early finds also allowed Ingraham to build computer
simulations that correctly predicted where some toys would wash ashore in the North Pacific after traveling 10,000 miles over three years.
The predictions include the prospect of some toys making their way through the North Pole to get to the North Atlantic, hitchhiking atop slow moving ice part of the way.
Ebbesmeyer sees the toys as a vivid example of the problem of what he calls "transocean trash."
"Ten to twenty percent of the trash that leaves one continent goes to another," he says, citing his own calculations and those of another scientist. "Thirty percent of ocean trash goes around for thirty years" before landing, he adds, and even 50-year-old ocean trash has been found.
Ebbesmeyer notes too that 10,000 of the 100 million containers shipped annually fall overboard. "The ducks highlight trash and where it goes globally," he says, "because they were spilled in middle of the ocean and now they're on the edges of continents."
The environmental group Ocean Advocates says container ships are stacked higher and wider than ever, raising the odds of spillage, and that 30 percent of all cargo is hazardous material.
Ebbesmeyer echoes that concern, and says he recently found a computer monitor washed up on shore in Seattle. The heavy metals in monitors include lead.
Checking the serial number, he found it was one of some 2,000 that had spilled 4,000 miles away.
That a monitor could bob along that far impresses even Ebbesmeyer, who has seen many an item washed ashore. Describing how monitors float with the screen up since they've got hollow space around the screen, he says fondly that "they even wink at you as they reflect the sun."
"If this were oil, we'd have NOAA out here," he said. "I'm not in the business of pointing fingers, but I just want to show what's going on and the ducks are good way of doing that."
BATH WITH A GLOBAL DUCK
The story of the bath toys has been reported over the years, but never before have they had a bounty on their heads. For the toys, it's been an amazing journey since they first hit the water in the middle of the North Pacific.
Ebbesmeyer says his calculations show that the ducks can travel 15 miles per day on water, and one mile a day on ice. So while any ducks arriving on the East Coast from the North Pacific would probably have been slowed by ice, ducks traveling the other way could conceivably be in South Africa by now.
"If I found a duck in South Africa that's a big deal," he said. "That means the duck would have traveled 20,000 miles."
So what happens to the ducks and other animals once they're identified? The First Years says it will understand should finders want to be keepers. "If one ends up in a baby's bath, rather than at the company headquarters, we'll be happy to have contributed our part to both science and smiles," says Hollywood.
Ebbesmeyer, for his part, says he has yet to have any earlier finds from the North Pacific turned over. "The owners keep them; they're very possessive," he says.
Not only are they "great conversation pieces," he says, "it's pretty cool to take a bath with a global duck."