Subpolar Gyre & the Amazing Voyage of the Yellow Ducks

They're yellow, they go quack, and they’re made of plastic; what am I talking about? Yeah, you got it, scientific water buoys! Or at least, that’s what these rubber ducky’s have become to oceanographers across the globe.

It happened in 1992, 15 years ago, on a storm tossed night somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of mainland China; 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs were washed overboard from a Chinese freighter.

Having travelled 17,000 miles, past Hawaii, Australia, the location of the Titanic’s sinking, and even being caught up in an Arctic ice-pack, the rubber ducks have proved a boon for scientists who have looked to study the oceans currents. Their normal types of water-buoy used to track currents are much less remarkable, and have thus not been reported nearly as much as this flotilla of ducks frogs and turtles.

Retired oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has dedicated the last 15 years to tracking these toys across the world, and he has predicted they will make their final landing somewhere along the South-West of England.

'We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard. It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches. Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."

No longer colored as they originally were, the sea-waters have corroded them to a pale white, but they are still a valuable commodity the world over. The makers of the toys, ‘The First Years’, offered a $100 reward for return of the toy as they made their way to the States, and are now offering a £50 for return of the toys as they wash up in Britain.

Their journey started in the Pacific Ocean, when they were subsequently caught in the Subpolar Gyre (counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering Sea) which took them to the coastline of Alaska. It is at this point that some ducks make a break for it and headed south to South America, Australia and even Hawaii. The rest though escaped the Gyre and headed North, through the Bering Strait and into the frozen waters of the Arctic where they were frozen in to pack ice. Slowly moving eastward they finally make it to the North Atlantic where they begin thawing and sliding southward, being seen off the coasts from Maine to Massachusetts.

Since then, the duck fleet has been making their way down the eastern US seaboard, and will eventually be caught up by the Gulf Stream and deposited in to the North Atlantic Drift to be taken to England.

Whoever thought Ernie’s little yellow rubber ducky could travel so far away from the bathtub!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464768&in_page_id=1770
Ocean Currents - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Ocean_currents_1943.jpg
Ducky photo - http://photography.ronshouse.com/photos/03152006.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/44/171786999_768a8f20e6.jpg