These posts make more sense when read in order.
Please click here for the first article in this series.
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| Wikiwijs.nl (adjusted). |
The devastating tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 washed around five million tons (4,500,000 tonnes) of debris into the ocean. It only took a couple of years before some arrived in Hawai‘i. Derelict boats appeared in Canada, California, and Hawai‘i, as well as a refrigerator that came ashore near Honolulu. Two floating docks ended up in Washington and Oregon. Just a year after the disaster, the debris had spread over an area three times the size of the continental United States and has probably since spread throughout the Pacific. While most of it sank or disintegrated, some is no doubt still floating around far out at sea.
In 1992 a Chinese factory shipped twenty-eight thousand rubber yellow ducks, green frogs, blue turtles, and red beavers called Friendly Floatees to Massachusetts on a container ship. Encountering a storm near the International Date Line, a thousand miles (1,600 km) east of Northern Japan and south of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, twelve of the forty-foot-long cargo containers fell overboard. The choppy waves broke open the one with the rubber bath toys, releasing them to float off across the Pacific.
Carried by the North Pacific Gyre—a current that circles around in the North Pacific, going east from Japan, south along North America’s west coast, then west to Indonesia, and back north to Japan—the toys drifted towards North America. About a third of them eddied off into the Subpolar Gyre, which circles below Alaska, while the rest headed south towards the equator. Here some again split off, ending up in the South Pacific Gyre, which circles by south by Australia, then east and north along South America. Thus a few began washing ashore in Hawai‘i, Indonesia, Australia, and South America.
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Wikiwijs.nl (adjusted). |
The following year they were seen floating over the Titanic’s grave, with one landing in Scotland in 2003. It’s thought that some might have made it to England and Ireland in 2007, having traveled about 17,000 miles (27,000 km) in fifteen years.
Some are probably still sailing around the world’s oceans. The ducks and beavers have turned white, but frogs and turtles have maintained their original colors. Since the rubber is nearly indestructible, they should be able to drift for centuries.
Previously there was a similar accident in 1990 where twenty-one containers from South Korea toppled into the ocean, four of which broke open releasing Nike sports shoes, hiking boots, children’s shoes, computer equipment, and sex toys to drift on the currents.
After floating for a year, some of the 61,280 shoes began showing up on beaches in Canada, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. Soon the beaches were covered in multicolored shoes. Beachcombers began collecting them, trying to match up pairs of the same size, which was difficult because it was found that the shape of the shoes caused the left ones to float in one direction, while the right ones went another. Once matched, the beachcombers scraped off the barnacles and threw them in the washer with a little bleach and they came out looking new. One report in 1992 said they had landed in Hawai‘i and were headed for Japan, but I’ve heard nothing of them since.
Meanwhile, sixteen thousand sneakers sit in a container on the ocean floor about three hundred miles south of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
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