Customer Reviews

Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion (Scientists in the Field Series)

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This book is amazing! It's a such a great story I forgot I was reading a science book.

Dr. Burns managed to deliver a serious message in a manner that is down-to-Earth and never preachy. Her writing style is engaging, I felt like she was sitting in the room chatting with me. The photographs are captivating, and sometimes heartbreaking.

I've recommended this children's book to several friends - all adults. It's fun to read and extremely interesting. I can't wait for Dr. Burns' next book!

What a great book! I read it aloud to my son and found other adults listening in. It combines geography, ecology, oceanography and probably a few other ologies. Great pictures, great story to follow. The message is that science isn't conducted only in a lab. Anyone can discover something valuable by observing what goes on around them.

Tracking Trash is the story of Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who studies the movement of ocean currents. Dr. Ebbesmeyer's work has attracted attention because he has received much of his information from studying trash. It all began when his mother heard about sneakers that were washing up on a beach after a cargo ship lost one of its containers. Since then, he has tracked sneakers, Lego's, and even rubber duckies that have been accidentally spilled at sea and made their way to shore. By understanding how ocean currents move, scientists hope to solve many problems such as fish shortages and animals being caught in fishing nets. This book was very enjoyable to read and easy to understand. The pictures were large and engaging. The author did a great job at making it feel like a story while at the same time giving a lot of scientific information.

"Mr. Thompson calls the waiter, orders steak and baked potater
But he leaves the bone & gristle & he never eats the skins.
Then the bus boy comes & takes it, with a cough contaminates it
As he puts it in a can with coffee grounds & sardine tins.
Then the truck comes by on Friday & carts it all away
And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the bay."

Perhaps the dumping of garbage into the bay is not quite as blatant today as it was back in 1969 when Bill Steele wrote his eco-ditty, "Garbage," but it seems that today's never-ending flow of plastic garbage into the oceans is of more dire and destructive consequence to the oceans' long-term survival than anything they've previously faced. This is one of the conclusions to be drawn from the fascinating and important TRACKING TRASH: FLOTSAM, JETSAM, AND THE SCIENCE OF OCEAN MOTION.

Who knew that beachcombers kept meticulous logs of their finds or that they actually held conventions? Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who began his widely-publicized work with ocean currents and tracking trash when his mom asked him to figure out why hundreds of sneakers had begun washing up on beaches near Seattle, has uncovered significant clues through his ongoing communications with beachcombers. We learn in TRACKING TRASH that there are slight changes year to year in the oceans' currents and that projections of those current flows is now a well-refined science whose origins harken back to scientific work by Benjamin Franklin.

The first part of TRACKING TRASH is especially entertaining to read. Huge cargo containers periodically fall from enormous cargo ships in big storms. The cargo gets loose and takes off with the currents. Many readers will be amused by the thought of eighty thousand Nike sneakers drifting eastward in the currents, of twenty-nine thousand rubber duckies and froggies bobbing merrily along, or of five million LEGO pieces breaking loose in the middle of the Atlantic. But the incidents of lost cargo are a drop in the bucket; they're less than one-fifth of the problem. The remainder, the more serious story, is of large quantities of garbage -- so much of it plastic-based -- getting flushed out of rivers and bays into the sea.

Having fond memories of creating "whirlpools" with friends in little backyard swimming pools, it is not surprising to learn that when a stream of indestructible plastic garbage is continually dumped into the ocean, it will eventually come together in a big bobbing mass surrounded by circulating currents. What is impressive (or, more likely, alarming and depressing) is that a so-called Garbage Patch in the Pacific is now as big as the state of Alaska and estimated to be composed of the accumulation of six BILLION pounds of plastic this, plastic that, and plastic everything else.

"What happens to this plastic trash during the decades it floats around the Garbage Patch? Not much, because plastic is one of the most indestructible materials on the planet. This is one of the reasons we find it so useful. Plastic is found in everything, from the toys we play with to the plates we eat from, the cars we drive, and even the clothes we wear.
"Unfortunately, the very property that makes plastic a useful material for all these items makes it virtually impossible to get rid of. There is no organism anywhere on the planet that can digest plastic. A long exposure to sunshine, wind,, and waves will eventually break plastic objects into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, but those small pieces are still made entirely of indestructible, indigestible plastic.

And when birds and marine mammals get mixed up with all of this plastic they die.

"Bottle caps and disposable lighters are seen in the carcasses of sea birds found on beaches from Hawaii to Washington. Apparently the birds are mistaking floating plastic for food. Many of these birds die of starvation because the plastic filling their stomachs can be neither digested nor excreted. Discarded fishing nets and other fishing gear can tangle and drown fish, sea turtles, seals, and other animals. Experts now estimate that the number of marine mammals in the Pacific Ocean that die each year due to plastic ingestion and net entanglement approaches 100,000."

This particular passage in the well-illustrated book is accentuated with a photo of a dead, rotting bird complete with the fifty-nine plastic pieces that were stuck in its gut.

The immediate solution? Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. If plastic bags are so indestructible, then I shouldn't take one unless I'm going to reuse it numerous times and then recycle it. Long term, there is no question that big changes must be made in terms of manufacturing and consuming so much petroleum-based plastic stuff.

"There's nothing left to watch & there's nothing left to touch
There's nothing left to walk upon & nothing left to talk upon
And nothing left to see & nothing left to be but Garbage!"

As with other books I've read in the Scientists in the Field series, TRACKING TRASH reveals the profiled scientists to be pretty cool people with extremely interesting jobs. It'll definitely inspire interest by readers in science.

As I sit here with Tracking Trash in front of me, I am drawn in by everything from the engaging cover to the approachable, kid-friendly text to the vivid images that adorn each page.

This is a book that not only explains oceanographic concepts, but also gets into subjects such as the environment, conservation, and ecology. And it's all framed in a story that not only is engaging to read, but also shows how the perseverance of a few curious people can change our understanding of the world around us.

It's an important read for young and old alike.

What a great book. We all know we are supposed to reuse, reduce and recycle but what I did not know was how our plastic waste was effecting our oceans. What was fun about this book was that you are not lectured about the horrors of plastic waste. Instead you get an exciting view of scientists at work. They study neat things like how to predict when and where a bunch of shoes will wash to shore if they get tossed from a container ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a storm. Part of what the scientist find is a huge garbage patch in the ocean. Read the book to find out more. To top it all off the pictures are fantastic and very intriguing.

Certain non-fiction series instill a sense of comfort in your average everyday children's librarian. When you know you can count on something that's consistently good, it really makes your collection development choices all the easier. Take as today's example the Scientists in the Field series. The consistently award-winning titles they churn out cover a wide range of specialties. Until now, however, they've tended to be scientists that study living things. The Bug Scientists. The Tarantula Scientist. The Woods Scientist. Even Hidden Worlds: Looking Through a Scientist's Microscope. So you can understand my initial confusion when I saw that the next scientist was far more interested in discarded shoes and random Legos than bugs or beasties. "Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion," examines the human effect on the environment and the ways in which our inadvertent littering have helped us understand things like ocean streams and currents.

It's always wonderful when your hobby can be your job. Take the case of Mr. Curt Ebbesmeyer as your example. It used to be that Mr. Ebbesmeyer just determined the best locations for sewage outflow pipes. He'd help with oil tanker clean-ups too, but it wasn't until 1990 that he found his true calling. When his mother pointed out to him an article about the recent landfall of hundreds of sneakers along the coast of Seattle, Ebbesmeyer was intrigued. How'd they get there? Where did they come from? And why were they landing where they were? Some preliminary digging led him to discover that a tanker had accidentally dropped its cargo container of sneakers into the sea during a particularly rough crossing. Yet it wasn't until Ebbesmeyer realized that the sneakers could tell us how ocean currents flow that people began to take into account the importance of tracking where trash goes. In this way, author Loree Burns shows us other spills over the years and the ways in which scientists use the information. We hear about the computer modeling program OSCURS and its uses. We note the effect our dumping has had on some of the more fragile ocean environments. Finally, we see what the professionals are doing in an effort to clean up our seas and what we, as beachcombers, can do.

Visuals are always important in a non-fiction title with this kind of subject matter. In this way, the book does very well for itself. There's a wonderful picture, for example, of a sneaker and a duckie floating in some water. This tank test shows just how much more buoyant the duck is, drilling home the idea of why it would travel faster on ocean currents than the tennies. Thanks to a veritable plethora of photographs, Burns' title is consistently pleasing to the eye. Graphs and maps clarify some of the more technical aspects while other sections utilize subsections and small illustrations. The back of the book contains a Glossary, a list of recommended books for kids AS WELL AS "Web Sites to Explore" (so extra points there). There are additional Bibliographic Notes and an Index in the back.

What you have to consider with any complex children's non-fiction title is audience. In short: Will kids pick up and read this book? This is easy enough to answer when it comes to something like fellow Scientists in the Field series title "Tarantula Scientist". Big ugly spiders? Heck yeah they're gonna pick that up! But young beachcombing enthusiasts are a rare breed of child. You could argue that this book appeals to more than the beachcombing set, of course. There are kids who are fascinated with the ocean. Kids that are worried about pollution of the seas. Etc. Again, though, they make up a small percentage of the overall American child population. There is no denying that "Tracking Track" is a special book. Probably one that will end up used as a homework text rather than pleasurable reading. This is a pity because there's a lot of fun information in here. If I were to booktalk this to a group I'd definitely make a mention of the "ghost nets". These tend to be huge abandoned nets that flow through the sea destroying coral reefs and trapping animals. Come on. How can you resist a term like "ghost nets"? Seriously!

I heard a criticism of this title from a fellow librarian that basically went, "I got bored reading this book. I didn't get bored reading `Tarantula Scientist'." Yeah. Well. Latitude and Longitude versus big hairy spiders? Not exactly a fair fight if you ask me. The thing is, Burns' book really is fascinating, but there is a distinct danger of it losing its audience in the first half. The aforementioned librarian, after all, didn't get far enough to hear about the ghost nets or the mysterious floating trash pile of the sea. If I had my druthers, I'd flip the first and second halves of this book. Lure the people in with the monster debris and pictures of barnacle-ridden nets. Then, once they're hooked, slowly ease into the floating shoes and rubber duckies, ending with a quick encapsulation of tides and finally finishing with a look at Mr. Ebbesmeyer. It's not the most linear way of tackling the subject, but at this point I worry that the early concentration on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the OSCURS modeling program is going to turn off potential readers a touch too soon.

Because seriously, this is fascinating information. I mean, did you know that two thousand to ten thousand 60,000 pound containers just happen to fall overboard from cargo ships EVERY YEAR??? Or that there's a mysterious floating patch of garbage that takes a week to cross by boat? I was, admittedly, more than a little sad that there wasn't a single picture of this patch. My husband remains convinced that it's a mythical occurrence like Bigfoot or Nessie. After all, how hard would it be for a research vessel to click a pic of a mile(s)-long trash pile-up? Regardless, it's a great book and a necessary addition to any collection. One of those titles that will be of as much use to kids in seaside towns as to the millions of landlocked lubber nationwide. A necessary purchase.

We checked this out at the library for our very science oriented family, specifically our 5yo son. My husband and I were absolutely amazed by "ocean drift" and found the book just as captivating (or more so) than our son. We decided to buy it on Amazon to permanently have for ourselves and have already shared it with many of our friends. Great pictures, very readable and understandable for young children even.

If you know someone who likes nature /ecology/ oceanography/ conservation of any age- this would be a great gift!

I live on the beach and have always wondered why there is so much garbage and why there seems to be more now than 10 years ago. This not only explains it all, but provides photographs and maps that make it all make sense. I know this is geared to a younger audience, but who has the patience to wade through volumes just to find out why our coastlines are so full of trash? Why we can't stay on top of it and why we continue to find dead sea life on the shores. What we are doing to our environment is horrible, but this book puts it into a quick read. I have a hotel and every guests manages to read this book. I would make it the equivalent of watching a documentary on the subject - a little entertaining and a lot of knowledge in a couple of hours. It's great coffee table conversation too.

While published for children, 'Tracking Trash' is definitely readable by all, and is especially poignant for anyone who thinks that trash/litter just eventually disappears. The discovery of a floating garbage dump in the ocean the size of Alaska attests to the contrary. A few years ago I had a sudden realization myself at how dependent we are on plastics. Look around you right now: What isn't made of plastic? It's astounding. Two facts that will stick with me: No organism on earth can digest plastic, and plastic doesn't naturally break down into anything - except smaller pieces of plastic.