Science in the News Weekly: Tub Toys Lost Overboard Help Oceanographers Track Ocean Currents

It seems unlikely that rubber ducks designed for bathtub play would be of much use to researchers. Yet scientists who study ocean currents were delighted at what happened when a freighter lost thousands of tub toys overboard during a storm in the Pacific.

An article in Science News last week explained how, seven months after the cargo went over the side, the tub toys were washing up on beaches as distant as Scotland and Maine. Most remained stuck in Pacific Subarctic Gyre, a series of deepwater and surface currents spanning an area the size of the continental U.S.

Nearly 1,000 of the toys have been recovered so far, with the date and place of each providing a data point, according to retired oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. This and other flotsam is enabling scientists to fill in details about how the Pacific Subarctic Gyre works.