The Rubber Duckie Map — How Children’s Toys Help Chart the Ocean

The power of the storm was inescapable. The noise, unimaginable. Waves smashed into the sides of the 1,000-foot long ship, splashing freezing water over the deck and slamming into many of the 3,000 containers the ship carries on board. Most containers are held down by their own mass. Millions of car parts, floor tiles, and processed metals weather the storm in silent comfort. Waves like this are rare in the North Pacific, but not unheard of. Containers and the ships that carry them regularly endure conditions like this. Today though, there are an unlucky few containers stacked near the top of the 50ft. tall piles of metal. They became unbalanced and toppled into the ocean. As the containers plummeted into the deep, they struck each other and the ship, bursting open and spilling almost 29,000 rubber duckies and frogs into the ocean.

These Friendly Floatees brand toys were on their way from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington, but barely made it halfway. 12 containers were washed off the ship, spilling into the ocean and breaking open in the sea. After the waves died down and the huge metal containers slipped to the bottom of the sea, 29,000 rubber toys were left behind, silently bobbing up and down in the middle of the Pacific.

In the harsh environment of the North Pacific, the cardboard rapidly broke down and was either eaten by fish or thrashed apart by the waves. This released the rubber cargo into the wilds of the ocean and to the mercy of its currents. It also piqued the…