Official News - page 10

REAL LIFE NEWS: RUBBER DUCK FLOTILLA HEADS FOR ENGLAND

by Hazed

The beaches of southwest England could soon play host to a very unusual kind of flotsam: a flotilla of plastic ducks that have been on a 15 year voyage around the world.

The ducks' story started in 1992 when they were packed into boxes in China and loaded onto a ship to be sent to the US, where the toy company The First Years Inc had ordered them. But one stormy January night, the crates were washed overboard and broke open. 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs were set free to sail the oceans.

Cargo washing overboard isn't that unusual, but what made these particular items of interest is the fact that they are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, so they didn't sink, or break up or get destroyed. They stayed afloat and formed an armada. At which point, oceanographers started to follow the progress of the ducks because they are an enormous aid when charting the great ocean currents. Apart from anything else, anybody who spots them is far more likely to report them to the authorities than the boring floats the scientists normally use.

Since the start of their amazing voyage, the ducks have travelled 17,000 miles. At one point the flotilla split up. Some landed in Hawaii, but others headed north and into the icy waters of the Arctic, where they were frozen into the ice. They travelled slowly across the pole until they reached the North Atlantic where they began to thaw and move south.

Some landed on the east coast of the US, and one even made it all the way across to the Scottish islands. Now, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who has devoted his retirement to tracking the ducks on their journey, has predicted that this summer they will start washing up on beaches in Cornwall and the southwest of England. They will be easy to spot because they are have largely faded to a bleached white color, and they have the words "The First Years" stamped on them.

What's more, there's a bounty on the ducks: find one and return it to the US firm and you could get a $50 reward. Although personally if I found one I'd rather keep it as a souvenir.

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