Journey through the Floating World
A scientist studies flotsam

Hal Hughes

The great sneaker spill proved to be a boon to oceanography. Having precise data for the spill and its contents allowed Ebbesmeyer, working with W.J. (Jim) Ingraham, Jr. and the latter’s computer program, OSCURS (Ocean Surface Current Simulator), to reconstruct the route of the shoes to the beaches they washed up on in January 1991. The sneakers were good study objects because they were buoyant, durable, and resistant to barnacles and other fouling creatures. Beachcombers who retrieved them were often able to match pairs, give them a good washing, and wear or sell them almost like new.

Ebbesmeyer had long employed "drift sticks," drogues, and other floaters to track currents, mostly to predict paths of oil spills and sewage outflows, at first for oil companies and later for his own firm. The sneaker event, and the accuracy of the OSCURS predictions, led him to study other flotsam to understand ocean currents better. Following cargo spills, he also gathered information from beachcombers around the world. These contacts developed into a network connected by Ebbesmeyer’s newsletter and website (http://beachcombersalert.org).

As Ebbemeyer learned more about flotsam, he became ever more fascinated by oceanic gyres--cyclical currents that flow around all parts of the seas--and obsessed with understanding how they function as parts of a global system.

This growing interest in the "floating world" led him to scour history and literature for records that might throw light on the subject. Poring through writings as diverse as Norse sagas, the logs of Christopher Columbus, and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, he learned that long before scientific oceanography, people had gleaned knowledge of currents from flotsam. Along the way he studied records of messages in bottles, glass fishnet floats, "sea beans" and other floating seeds, derelict ships, volcanic pumice, surfboards, even floating coffins and cadavers, and especially plastic--lots of plastic.

He found that ancient mariners used flotsam to find sea routes and safe harbors. Evangelists spread the Gospel by putting tracts in bottles and "casting them upon the waters." Archaeologists learned about human history and migrations, including how and when people from Asia may first have reached the Americas.

Ebbesmeyer’s new book, Flotsametrics and the Floating World, is a delightful read, filled with humor and charming stories of his life, work, and friends, but there is a dark side, as well. The inescapable fact is that humans have abused the oceans on a massive scale, and we’re only beginning to recognize the consequences. Much of the rich soup that is seawater is now permeated with plastics, right down to the molecular level, doing damage far beyond unsightly beach litter. There are at least eight garbage patches in the 11 major oceanic gyres, not just the famous one in the North Pacific. "Collector" beaches, where winds and currents dump tons of debris, give overwhelming evidence of our thoughtless profligacy. "Studies . . . show plastic particles increasing tenfold every ten years in the 1970s and 80s--and tenfold in just three years in the '90s." Ebbesmeyer’s research on oil spills and sewage flows was ignored again and again by government and industry, till he despaired of science being able to affect policy.

He expects climate change to have major impacts on the gyres, especially as Arctic ice melts, allowing the three north polar gyres to speed up dramatically. He’s found that all the world’s gyres are interconnected in harmonic relationships akin to musical intervals--a change in one current affects all the others. Here, as in so much of what Ebbesmeyer has to tell us, the beauties and dangers of ocean systems are bound together. The joy of discovery is mitigated by new understanding of impending crises.

Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano. Collins/Smithsonian Books, New York, 2009. 304 pp., $26.99 (hard cover).