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Just Ducky-A-Story

I found this wonderful  story a few years ago in a coffee shop. it was from a local coffee
newspaper  with little interesting stories in it, but I was never able to credit
it to the  author as it never mentioned who had written it. This is another
version of the  same story but I can now credit this one to the London Evening
Standard. Please  note that the original was very fun and whimsical and I had to
share the last  paragraph of the story I had originally read.  I share it with
you at the bottom  of this article. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did
and still do as it  hangs on my wall in my soap room.
Picture
They were toys destined only to bob up  and down in nothing bigger than a child's
bath - but so far they have floated  halfway around the world.
The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow  ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free
from a cargo ship 15 years ago.
Since then they have travelled 17,000  miles, floating over the site where the Titanic
sank, landing in Hawaii and even  spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.

And now they are heading straight for  Britain. At some point this summer they are
expected to be spotted on beaches in  South-West England.
While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss  to the bath-time fun of thousands of children,
their adventures at sea have  proved an invaluable aid to science.
 
The toys have helped researchers to  chart the great ocean currents because when
they are spotted bobbing on the  waves they are much more likely to be reported
to the authorities than the  floats which scientists normally use.
And because the toys are made of durable  plastic and are sealed watertight, they
have been able to survive years adrift  at the mercy of the elements.

Boxes of the bath time toys - made in  China for the U.S. firm The First Years Inc -
were washed overboard in the  eastern Pacific Ocean one stormy January night in
1992 and broke open.
In the intervening time oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his
retirement to tracking the  little yellow ducks and their friends over 17,000
miles and it is he who has  predicted that this summer they will land in the
 West of England.  Mr Ebbesmeyer said:  '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."
Mr Ebbesmeyer said the toys will be easy  for British beachcombers to spot because
they have largely faded to white and  have the words "The First Years" stamped
upon them.
George Bush Sr was still US President  when the toys from The First Years Inc. were
made in China, packed into a  container and put on a ship for the US.

But after falling overboard, the sea  water corroded the cardboard packaging and the
toys floated free. They circled  the northern Pacific once before being washed
up on the Alaskan shore, then all  down the West coast of Canada and the US.

Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how  valuable the little toys would be to scientific
research of the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire
climate.
He correctly predicted what many thought  was impossible - that thousands of them
would end up washed into the Arctic ice  near Alaska, and then move at a mile a
day, frozen in the pack ice, around their  very own North-West Passage to the
Atlantic.
It proved true years later and in 2003,  the first "Friendly Floatees" were found,
frozen and then thawed out on the  eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

So precious to science are they that the  US firm that made them is offering a £50
bounty for finding one.
THE JOURNEY SO FAR:
 
10 JANUARY 1992:
Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific  Ocean nearly 29,000 First Years bath
toys, including bright yellow rubber ducks,  are spilled from a cargo ship in
the Pacific Ocean.
16 NOVEMBER 1992:
Caught in the Sub polar Gyre  (counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering
Sea, between Alaska and Siberia),  the ducks take 10 months to begin landing on
the shores of Alaska.
EARLY 1995:
The ducks take three years to circle  around. East from the drop site to Alaska,
then west and south to Japan before  turning back north and east passing the
original drop site and again landing in  North America. Some ducks are even
found In Hawaii. The National Oceanic and  Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
worked out that the ducks traveled  approximately 50 per cent faster than the
water in the current.
1995 - 2000: Some
intrepid ducks escape the Sub  polar Gyre and head North, through the Bering
Strait and into the frozen waters  of the Arctic. Frozen into the ice the ducks
travel slowly across the pole,  moving ever eastward.
2000: Ducks begin reaching the North Atlantic  where they begin to thaw and move Southward. Soon ducks are sighted bobbing in  the waves from Maine to Massachusetts.
2001: Ducks are tracked in the area where the  Titanic sank.
 
JULY TO DECEMBER 2003:
The First Years company offers a $100  savings bond reward for the recovery of
wayward ducks from the 1992 spill. To be  valid ducks must be sent to the
company and must be found in New England, Canada  or Iceland. Britain is told to
prepare for an invasion of the wayward ducks as  well.
2003:
A lawyer named Sonali Naik was on  holiday in the Hebrides in north-west Scotland when she
found a faded green frog  on the beach marked with the magic words 'The First
Years'. Unaware of the  significance of her find she left it on the beach. It
was only when she was  chatting to other guests at her hotel that she realized
what she had  seen.


As quoted from the story I first read 
called “The Big Splash” If anyone out there knows who I should credit this
  story to please let us know.

“The moral of this Story? Garbage never
  disappears it just drifts: fate is a fickle friend;

Chinese manufactrures produce one tough
  duck. It’s your choice, but I prefer to leave you with this warning:  If you
  happen to come upon a faded duck, beaver, frog or turtle the next time you are
  beachcombing do not attempt to pick it up!

These little suckers are not what they
  appear; they are no longer gentle and lovable bathtub friends.

No, my friends these are seasoned
  seafarers, hardened by 15+ years of ice, wind and cold salt water. They’re wild
  now and should be admired from afar”.
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