Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science (Hardcover)

~ Curtis Ebbesmeyer (Author), Eric Scigliano (Author)
Key Phrases: sneaker spill, garbage patch, frontal eddies, Puget Sound, North Pacific, Turtle Gyre (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Part oceanography lesson, part memoir, this cheerful book examines Ebbesmeyer's life and work as a pioneering oceanographer (the first to work for Mobil/Standard Oil, in 1969) and connoisseur of beach-combed artifacts. His primary interest is ocean currents, especially gyres—great circular, interlocking currents that sweep the Earth's waters with clockwork regularity—and the flotsam they carry around the planet. Everything from athletic shoes and bathtub toys to messages in bottles and corpses have provided data to help Ebbesmeyer trace currents. He recounts how flotsam guided colonization and exploration, from Norse explorers to Christopher Columbus (the first to master the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre). Today, Ebbesmeyer says, the human propensity for creating garbage has also made flotsam an environmental concern, with too many studies neatly filed away and forgotten. This account, made lively with the help of journalist Scigliano (Puget Sound), might encourage many readers to dream of roundi[ng] the gyres like Ebbesmeyer, searching out the world's trashiest beaches. Illus. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Stuff that washes ashore elicits the discernment of oceanographer Ebbesmeyer. He is interested both in the intrinsic properties of what beachcombers find and in what flotsam and jetsam reveal about ocean currents. For this account of an offbeat area of research, Ebbesmeyer intersperses the arc of his career, which began in the oil industry, with an eclectic suite of stories related to floating objects. Some tales concern instruments purposely thrown overboard by scientists like himself; others are about the lore of messages in bottles; most, however, concentrate on material unintentionally cast adrift. Through a combination of computer modeling and identification of the place and time something—whether a shipping container or a person—went into the water, Ebbesmeyer defines 11 great surface currents on which flotsam rides. These gyres convey telling information about the health of the oceans, as their circular action sorts immense quantities of trash, some marooned midocean in garbage patches, some preferentially beached in locales that Ebbesmeyer visits. With a whimsical mood overlaying serious science, Ebbesmeyer’s work will appeal to the environmentally minded. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061558419
• ISBN-13: 978-0061558412
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,418 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science Afloat, July 14, 2009

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Curtis Ebbesmeyer graduated from college with a degree in mechanical engineering. When he went to work for Big Oil, he also got his doctorate in oceanography. He got to travel all over the world because ocean flows affect oil rigs. He became interested in sea currents and in beaches and how debris is carried onto land. And then in 1990 five shipping containers full of shoes washed off a ship, and it set Ebbesmeyer into his true scientific calling, which has made him world famous. In _Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science_ (Smithsonian Books / Collins), Ebbesmeyer, writing with reporter Eric Scigliano, has given an anecdote-filled autobiography, along with plenty of instruction in oceanography basics. It is a lively, funny look at a life spent doing serious science in an eccentric way. Ebbesmeyer tells us not only about adventures at sea and combing beaches, but also about the joys and frustrations of such things as getting peer-reviewed articles published. His book is a welcome look at what a particular scientific life has been like.

It was Ebbesmeyer's mother in 1991 who clipped an article for him to see. Nike shoes were landing all over the Oregon coast. Beachcombers helped him document where the shoes were found, and he started asking questions about where they came from. Nike was helpful. Not only could it tell him the exact location of the spill, but every single shoe is stamped with an ID number, which can be tracked back to the particular container that spilled it. Ebbesmeyer teamed with colleague Jim Ingraham to use a computer program called the Ocean Surface Current Simulator. OSCURS tracked the shoes backwards to the spill origin, and forward as the ones that did not wash upon a beach the first go around went back to sea for another cycle. Ebbesmeyer's analyses of the flotsam tracks, besides getting him published in oceanographic journals, kept the Nike sneaker story alive and kept the newspapers interested in it. When in 1992 a flotilla of bathtub toys started washing up in Alaska, Ebbesmeyer and OSCURS went to work again. The bath toys created even more of a sensation than the shoes did. It isn't all shoes and plastic toys out there. There are bodies; Ebbesmeyer has been called in to evaluate cases in "forensic flotsamology". Then there is everyone's favorite jetsam (as opposed to flotsam, which is accidentally lost over the side, while jetsam is deliberately jettisoned), the bottle with a note in it. Ebbesmeyer calculates that in the past half century, something like six million bottles have been launched with messages in them, and only a tenth of them are found and recorded. He gives a little history of bottled message lore, including the bottle that may have actually gotten the finder a six million dollar bequest.

Ebbesmeyer says many people have asked him if he staged that first sneaker spill that got him into his career. No: "It's just the inevitable result of shipping billions of shoes across the sea each year." If it were just shoes, we would have little to worry about, but Ebbesmeyer's research has much that ought to disturb us. Everyone frets over oil spills, for instance. "But oil dissipates and breaks down, becoming food for microorganisms... When we turn petroleum into plastic, however, we make it far more persistent and, I fear, more deadly." He coined the term "garbage patch", and in some cases the patches are huge ocean expanses at the center of revolving currents. The plastic trash particles can get eaten by sea life, and if they get pounded enough into teensy bits, plankton eats them, as do the animals that feed on the plankton, and the animals that feed on those animals, including us. "Imagine salting your food with plastic ground to dust," he warns. Ebbesmeyer has been paying attention to all that stuff floating around, and his book is a call for all of us, beachcombers or not, to do the same.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Charming, but also infuriating, September 14, 2009

By	Barry A. Klinger - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book contains many charming anecdotes about how floating objects,
from garbage to sneakers to dead bodies, are carried around by the
surface currents of the ocean. I particularly liked the extended
discussion of how careful observation of flotsam may have persuaded
Columbus that the ocean wasn't too wide to cross to India. The book
also gives some nice descriptions of what its like to conduct science
at sea.

However, as a physical oceanographer, I was disappointed and finally
infuriated by the book's neglect of the discoveries of literally
hundreds of scientists who have studied ocean circulation in the last
century. The book argues for new names of the major ocean gyres but
says little about how the gyres work. Other fascinating topics in
physical oceanography poorly explained by the book are the
relationship between the wind and ocean currents, the existence and
cause of strong currents on the western side of gyres, and the way the
Earth's rotation creates a simple relation between water velocity and
pressure. An intrinsic feature of ocean dynamics is that surface
water tends to converge (draw together in the center) in the
subtropical gyres and diverge (float apart) in the subpolar gyres.
This is very important for understanding why garbage patchs would
accumulate in the subtropical gyres and make landfall adjacent to the
subpolar gyres. Based on the book's discussions of physical
oceanography, I suspect the book could have said more about garbage
and other flotsam as well.

The large gaps in explanation would be less irritating if the book
didn't sometimes give the impression that Dr. Ebbesmeyer was
practically the only person studying ocean circulation. Readers of
the book will learn about the bottles thrown into the ocean by
preachers to evangelize strangers, but not about the thousands of
remotely-tracked drifters placed in the ocean by scientists to trace
the currents. Much of the book gives biographical information which
is sometimes interesting and relevant but sometimes drifts into
unconnected personal reminiscence. The book would have been much
better if some of the biographical parts were replaced by better
descriptions of the scientific context of Dr. Ebbesmeyer's quest for
the rubber ducky.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tracing the Stuff that Floats on the Ocean, July 15, 2009

By	Gregg Eldred (Avon Lake, OH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For some reason, people tend to flock to the water. Especially when vacation calls. There is something magical about sitting on a beach, watching the waves. Or in having a cold beverage while gazing at the vastness of the ocean. This migration to the water seems to be part of human nature - a throw back to some ancient time. As we are in the midst of summer, a book concerning the oceans, and things that float on it, seems like a great idea. Part science, part autobiography, part cautionary tale, Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curt Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, makes for the perfectly literal beach book.

Contents: Preface: A New World, Chasing Water; Oil and Icebergs; Messages in Bottles; Eureka, a Sneaker!; Coffins, Castaways, and Cadavers; The Admiral of the Floating World; Borne on a Black Current; The Great Conveyor; Ashes to Ashes, Life from the Sea; Junk Beach and Garbage Patch; The Synthetic Sea; The Music of the Gyres; Appendix A: Urban Legends of the Sea; Appendix B: A Million Drifting Messages; Appendix C: The Oceanic Gyres; Appendix D: Ocean Memory; Appendix E: Harmonics of the Gyres; Acknowledgements; Illustration Credits; Glossary; Further Reading; Index

Dr. Curt Ebbesmeyer wasn't always an oceanographer; his undergraduate degree is in Mechanical Engineering and after college, he landed a job with Mobil Oil. Soon, he decided he wanted a graduate degree and gravitated toward two possibilities; nuclear engineering and oceanography. His wife was interested in library sciences. Deciding on a college that was strong in all three took him to the University of Washington. It was there that Dr. Ebbesmeyer decided on oceanography. Flotsametrics is the story of Ebbesmeyer's rise to the top of oceanography by, of all things, studying and reporting on the flotsam and jetsam in the ocean. While he made a name for himself studying Puget Sound and the effects of wastewater discharged in it, he rose to prominence by researching and reporting on the beaching of thousands of toy ducks on the western coast of North America. Using a software program, OSCURS, developed by a friend, he was able to accurately predict where and when flotsam would wash up on the shore. With this knowledge, he was able to better study the gyres, continental-scale closed loops of water around which flotsam drifts, in the oceans of the world. He also coined the term "garbage patch," which are areas within a gyre where drifting objects collect. These areas create giant garbage dumps. one of which is called Junk Beach and is located on Hawaii's Big Island. Interestingly, Ebbesmeyer reveals the rhythmic nature of the world's oceans, adding an underlying beauty to the water. Finally, he weighs in with his thoughts on global warming and effect that it will have on the gyres as well as the pervasiveness of plastics in the oceans.

Like the tides, this book rises and falls. The science of the gyres, flotsam, garbage patches, and the cautionary words allow this book to sail. When Ebbesmeyer recounts his life, it has a dragging effect on the reader. I am sure that he has a wealth of interesting and lively anecdotes, however the ones that he chose for this book are overshadowed by the flotsam. While it makes for a few uninteresting pages, when he returns the seas, the pace really picks up. We are treated to maps, diagrams, and family pictures that add to the stories that he relates. Written in a manner that is accessible to everyone, his passion for the oceans is shared with the reader, who cannot close the book without having a better understanding of them. He is not heavy handed with global warming, but rather brings a different perspective; the plastics that pollute our oceans may be affecting the weather, and, without a doubt, the creatures that inhabit it and fly over it. While the chapter on the garbage patch was unnerving, he shows how these gathering places showed early voyagers where to make camp, provided Christopher Columbus with the knowledge that there is something out there, over the horizon, and brought iron and wood to remote areas of the world. If you live in Washington state or on or near an ocean, this is a very worthwhile book. For the rest of us, it no less interesting, as the oceans affect all of us. And if you have ever thrown a message in a bottle into the water, Ebbesmeyer will show you where it may have made landfall.