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How 28,800 lost rubber ducks mapped the ocean (1992)

A spilled container of bath toys helped oceanographers test their maps of the sea.

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The real story

On 10 January 1992 a container ship sailing from Hong Kong to Tacoma lost twelve containers in a North Pacific storm. One held 28,800 'Friendly Floatees': yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles and green frogs. Their cardboard packaging dissolved and the toys, which have no holes, floated free.

Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham were building a computer model of ocean surface currents. They asked beachcombers to report every toy they found, starting with the first ones in Sitka, Alaska, about ten months later. Some toys drifted for years, froze into Arctic ice, and bleached almost white in the sun, and each find was a free data point on where the water goes.

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The facts we checked

  • In January 1992 a cargo ship lost a container of 28,800 bath toys in the North Pacific
  • The toys (ducks, beavers, turtles, frogs) washed up for years; oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer used them to study ocean currents

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