Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Mans Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science

by Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Eric Scigliano

“Ebbesmeyer’s goal is noble and fresh: to show how the flow of ocean debris around the world reveals ‘the music’ of the world’s oceans.”

—New York Times Book Review

 

Through the fascinating stories of flotsam, one of the Earth’s greatest secrets is revealed. In Flotsametrics and the Floating World, maverick scientist Curtis Ebbesmeyer details how his obsession with floating garbage—from rubber ducks to discarded Nike sneakers—helped to revolutionize ocean science. Scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, host of CBC TV’s “The Nature of Things,” calls Flotsametrics and the Floating World  “Science and storytelling at its very best.” “A very enjoyable, if at times dark, book” (Nature), it is must reading for anyone interested in Oceanography, Environmental Science, and the way our world works.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Nature, Environment, Biography, Earth Sciences

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 11, 2009

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely some interesting facts here but it seemed awfully lengthy for a 300 page book. Not for me.
The author spends a lot of time on his childhood in California, schooling, family, and finally his many interests in retirement. In fact it’s his retirement interests that are at the heart of his book. He seems like a very nice person who dedicates his time to helping others with beachcombing interests all over the world and then ties his discoveries back to what he calls Flotsametrics. His writing is a little off kilter. Ebbesmeyer became interested in the 1990s in flotsam that had come loose from carrier ships, dropped into ocean “gyres” which eventually dropped them on U.S. west coast beaches, notably Nike athletic shoes and separately, rubber duckies. These items began to be found by beachcombers and then journalists. The idea isn’t new. Messages in bottles have interested people all over the world.

A lot of Ebbesmeyer’s book is whimsical. Academics might be irritated. He names his eleven ocean gyres after everything from Thor Heyerdahl, polar bears, to Turtle Gyre after the gyre turtles use to return to their Japanese breeding grounds. The author has so many interests he injects into his theme it can make your head spin (in a gyre like fashion). In addition to messages in bottles, rubber bath toys, glass fishing floats, and surf boards he has an entire chapter on coffins, bodies and body parts (shoes containing a foot).

You won’t find anything about the ecological implications of all this flotsam until the very end of the book. I was beginning to think his fascination with ocean gyres had blinded him to the very obvious. Don’t worry, he hasn’t forgotten.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

author Ebbesmeyer is and indie scientist, which is pretty hard to do, and concentrates on the the flotsam and jetsam found around oceans to try and figure out currents, climate, pollution, etc... He is sort of a controversial character, but writes a pretty good book and also has a newsletter about/for beachcombers. He is integral to book "Moby Duck" too

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

Though Hohn is by far a better writer, this Ebbesmeyer book has LOTS of pics and maps. so really should be read simultaneously. Plus has cool message-in-a-bottle charts in appendix. :)

[Dov Zeller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating mishmosh of personal narrative, oceanic lore, hard science and various notes on beachcombing, sneaker waterfalls (that is inaccurate, but it's what came to mind and maybe will make you more curious to read the book!) the history of plastic, etc. Some of the stuff about ocean currents was a little hard for me to grasp and I wish I had a person nearby who could explain it, because it seemed important and interesting. I highly recommend this book if you are curious about and/or care about oceans and currents and what happens to things that fall or get dropped into oceans, etc.

[Joann Neuroth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written by a guy who loves his job -- oceanography (although he didn't figure that out until he got an engineering job and then figured out he was bored silly with engineering tasks). And his enthusiasm is contagious. He gravitated toward the real science of tracking floating objects (natural, deliberate and accidental) to trace and measure the movement of water. Oceans, it turns out, aren't homogenous as we've all assumed. They're made up of "slabs" of water of different temperatures and densities, which hold together and blow around in gyres and currents and oceanic routes. Ebbesmeyer and friends use data from Nike sneakers and toy bathtub duckies (spilled when freighters capsized), corpses and body parts, derelict ships, message bottles and floating islands to discover amazing facts. Consider this quote: "the dry, intense heat of the Middle East causes so much water to evaporate from the eastern Mediterranean that the equivalent of five Amazon rivers rushes through the Straits of Gibraltar to fill the deficit."

I started skimming 2/3 of the way through ... evidently my oceanic curiosity didn't match Ebbemeyer's. But I'm very glad to have read it. Who knew so much was there to learn about floating things.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I thought this book was a simple--if very interesting--accounting of Curtis Ebbesmeyer's career in oceanography. Ebbesmeyer has done some very interesting studies of holistic ocean currents. When a ship loses a buoyant cargo, such as a few thousand Nike sneakers or highly distinctive bath toys, Ebbesmeyer has beachcombers contact him with the details of where the cargo washes up. Using this serendipitous data, he has made some very useful observations about ocean flow and specifically gyres. A gyre--as I learned from this book--is a gigantic (on the continental scale) closed loop of water around which flotsam (like Nike shoes and rubber duckies) drifts. Ebbesmeyer was able to use the data provided by this flotsam to chart the eleven ocean gyres in some detail in terms of their orbital period, dimensions, orbital speeds, and harmonic relationships. The whole thing is very interesting and charming until he reminds his readers that he is able to do this because humans are dumping massive quantities of garbage into the seas.

Ebbesmeyer makes an extremely vallid point about the incredibly long lifespan of plastic in the sea, the threat it presents to marine and human life, and how eventually it will come back to haunt us. This is a very good and valuable book; I highly recommend it.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always enjoy books written by passionate, obsessed science geeks. This is not a particularly linear book, but wow, it's interesting. It does point out in depressing detail just how badly we've screwed ourselves with plastics. I knew about part of the plastic problem in the oceans from reading the magnificent books of Carl Safina, but I didn't know that there are places in the ocean where look-alike particles of plastic outnumber plankton 50 to 1. Makes it hard to get a decent meal, if plankton is what one eats.

The work Ebbesmeyer has done on learning about and explicating the big gyres is simply fascinating. As is what washes up on the beach, and when, and how. The full story about the Nike spill is here, as well as the adorable tub toys that are still washing up. Thanks, Dr. Brazelton! *sigh*

The writing is hard to follow at some points, and wildly discursive at others. But worth it.

[A Mig · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating autobiography by an out-of-the-box scientist. Very entertaining to read about Ebbesmeyer's work in so many different fields and relating to so many extraordinary stories and people! His life is like the one we can read about in adventure novels. I learned a lot and will now look at flotsam on the beach in a totally different way! Ebbesmeyer coined the term "garbage patch" to describe the pollution in the Pacific Ocean, a term we'll be hearing more and more in the near future (unfortunately).

[Chris]

Not really an explanation for laypeople of how and why waves, currents, and wind transport plastic bottles to, say, a beach in Belize. This book is more a chronology of Curtis Ebbesmeyer's life with anecdotes about his work that require fair amount of prior oceanography knowledge to appreciate. But kudos to my colleague Eric Scigliano for capturing Ebbesmeyer's lively personality.

[Demerara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating book about, generally, everything that floats around on the oceans, and the currents and winds that move them. Very cool stories about the floating bath toys, sneakers, message bottles, and so on. A bit tedious to read, as part autobiography and part science. Good general information.

[Abigail (Abbe) · Rating 4 out of 5]

NPR Science Friday

very informative and FUN!

[Rachel Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was loaned to me, and I am very grateful that it was. This book answered a lot of my questions about the ocean that have been rattling around in my brain, and it provided answers to questions I hadn’t even thought of yet. This book is both informative and thought-provoking.

Some of the quotes that stood out to me:

“I don't belong to a particular religion; organized religion just gets in the way of too many things. But it's hard to escape the spiritual side of the ocean, and of oceanography. Such talk makes most oceanographers and other scientists uncomfortable; I know all too well the blank, discouraging stares my colleagues give if I don't purge any religious allusions from my speech - as well as the stiffening body language of religious groups when I speak to them about the ocean and they come to suspect I'm not born-again.” pg. 62

“As they say about books, does the person find the bottle or does the bottle find the person?” pg. 67

“[T]o be interested in beachcombing is to be interested in everything. Beachcombers are the keepers of the ocean's memory, sifting and sorting the chaotic surfeit thrown up by waves and tides, transmuting trash into artistic and scientific gold.” pg. 74-75

“Earthen graveyards
Distinguish rich from poor.
The sea, the greatest cemetery,
Makes no distinctions.” pg. 181

“[I] wondered if individual cells might indeed have a sort of awareness - a body-wide remembrance of the mother sea, a yearning for the medium in which the first living cells came to be.
A parallel yearning plays out even in creatures that dwell in the sea. Like humans migrating to the shore, they cycle back to their places of origin. Salmon return to spawn in their native streams. Sea turtles lay egg on the beaches where they hatched. Gray whales return to calve in the lagoons where they were born.” pg. 182

“Plastic is the great pretender, conceived in mimicry and dedicated to the simulation of everything else in art and nature.” pg. 208

“We will only save what we love, goes the classic conservationist syllogism. And we can only love what we know. Knowledge is power - the power to mend the world. This logic in some form or other drives and consoles the legions of scientists, naturalists, activists, and teachers who struggle, often in arduous conditions for meager compensation, to uncover and share the secrets of a natural world they see being assaulted and diminished daily.
Knowledge may cut to the core, but it is a double-edged blade. Our capacity to acquire it - the deuced cleverness of the human ape - also equips us to destroy what we should know and cherish. We have popped open the back of the magnificent watch that is the planetary ocean and begun to decipher the finely tuned workings of its intricate gears and springs. But we can destroy these exquisite works with a clumsy swipe of the hand, if we do not control ourselves.” pg. 226-227

“Talking to children renews my determination to decipher the secrets of the sea.” pg. 228

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you drop something into the ocean, whether a rubber ducky, a dead body, or a message in a bottle, it's likely to chart a path that will tell you something about the object in question, as well as about the water in which it's floating. It would seem that the data you might get from this would be limited, and mostly a minor curiosity (unless you really like rubber duckies, are intent on making sure that dead body doesn't get recovered, or you're bound and determined to make sure your bottled message gets through to someone).

Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer's delightful and informative "Flotsametrics and the Floating World" does a very good job of showing that we not only have a lot to learn from floating "stuff," but that unlocking much of the course of history and determining the course of the future is tied to watching how that stuff floats on the water.

It turns out that the ocean is not just a series of various seas defined mostly by their temperature and the land masses they surround. Rather, the oceans are a kind of machine composed of interlocking gyres whose individual courses and interactions are performing a figurative dance, accompanied by a literal song. It turns out their harmonics produce some of the most beautiful music in the universe (which, alas, we lack the ears to hear). Call it the aquatic version of the Musica Universalis/Harmony of the Spheres about which philosophers have hypothesized for centuries, and poets have waxed since they had tongues to speak.

It's popular science aimed at the curious layman, told by a brilliant and enthusiastic man whose sense of joy is infectious and whose presentation is clear. With illustrations, charts, photos, and some cool appendices, especially the one about the various myths of the sea, which takes pains to judge the credibility (or ridiculousness) of the most commonly-cited legends. Alas, no Flying Dutchman is included in this part. Recommended, regardless.

[Delia Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when I was a kid being asked to consider whether Māori drifted to Nz accidentally or navigated there- I now perceive that question to have been a really racist and undermining question that under estimates their skill- but this book introduced to me the possibility of drifting as a form of exploration: Columbus knew all about patterns of drifting. The book also made me realise (again) just how much we take the ocean for granted and utterly overlook its geography. As well as scientific ideas, it introduces some quite touching philosophy and fascinating anecdotes. I really enjoyed it.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
I liked the substance of the book and learned a lot, but I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the 2009 predecessor work to the more widely read 2011 Moby Duck, about 29,000 plastic bath toys lost off a cargo ship in a storm at sea and how oceanographers tracked them, plus additional material about ocean currents; another accident (sneakers); and a little about some of the personalities. Ebbesmeyer I guess just had a weaker marketing team or possibly there's something to some claims on this entry that his writing is just a tad weaker. it's nearly the same exact book, but for some reason Hahn got the awards and the sales.

second random comment about the book is that it's said every human being has one book inside of them, and Ebbesmeyer may be cast in precise point, as he mentions he's retiring, 61, and this appears to be his one full book-length work. contains odd very odd passage about the oceanographers' treatment of a colleague's deceased wife, but other than that, appears to be pretty much professional. not an absolute 4, but closer to the 4 than the 3; moderately recommended.

since following the crowd usually works, probably MOBY DUCK is the better read for time/cash, but there's nothing too horribly unreadable about this work if this is what enters your hands.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an account of the career of Curtis Ebbesmeyer and it is an interesting introduction to ocean science. Perhaps the most-surprising aspect of it is that Ebbesmeyer revives a lot of research on floating objects from earlier maritime eras. The 1800s were years when many people used floating bottles and other objects to research ocean currents. And Ebbesmeyer digs into what Christopher Columbus knew about flotsam arriving in Portugal and the Azores, which led him to speculate that Asia was much closer by ship than generally believed.

Ebbesmeyer gives the reader a good sense of how currents move and interact in the modern oceans. And, about how much trash is moving in today's oceans.

Curt keeps a "flotsametrics" website but at this writing has let it get stale, with the last blog postings two years old.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, so many things about the natural world that I had no idea about. This is a fascinating book about the forces that make the oceans move, layer by layer, mile by mile - and the flotsam and jetsom that move with the currents (and gyres and snarks and floating islands). Ebbesmeyer discusses everything from the oil industry to shipping practices (and mispractices) to massive junk beaches in Hawai'i to sewage runoff in the Puget Sound to how flotsam helped early explorers navigate uncharted waters. "Huh, who knew?" was the repeating phrase in my head.

The book's style is engaging enough, though sometimes I skimmed over the highly "sciencey" stuff. Still, this kind of data analysis is surely helpful for more methodical minds than mine. A good book - check it out.

[Yofish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book better, but the writing (at times) was pretty amateurish.

Largely autobiographical---how he got to be an expert on ocean currents. But also some science about what those currents are and how they work. I was much more interested in the latter than the former.

Lots of fun stuff about what people find on the beach, how such beachcombers communicate with each other, and how it helps him in his work. But again, just when it was getting interesting, he'd interrupt with some (amateurishly written) autobiographical notes.

[Marla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book completely fascinating. The author studied global ocean currents through flotsam and jetsam (do you know the difference?). It's interesting to read the tales of the Nike shoes, the rubber duckies, messages in bottles, volcanic ash and more. It is sobering to read about the great ocean garbage patches eternally trapped within the gyres. It's sad to read about the ever increasing concentration of plastic in the seas. The stories of the human drifters through history are amazing, particularly the Japanese "Hyoryu-min".

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The field of flotsametrics sounds endlessly fascinating, but this book reads like a textbook. I should have paid more attention to the subtitle, because the first chapter, at least, is about Curtis Ebbemeyer -- how he met his wife, got his first job, etc., etc. Before I gave up on the book, I flipped through the rest of it, only to find that subsequent chapters were just as boring to read as the first. Maybe someone else will come along to write a more compelling, fun book about how and why stuff washes up on the beach.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are willing to tolerate some dry chapters and passages that probably only an oceanographer would truly appreciate, there are treasures to be found in this book. Ebbesmeyer tells some wonderful true stories that teach interesting information about the sea. There are also passages which are very poignant and poetic- deeply moving, wonderful, and insightful. Overall, I would recommend the book as a "good read."

[Marianna Monaco · Rating 4 out of 5]

A passionate study of the currents of the seas through the observation of flotsam - things that float on the ocean.
There are stories and statistics of Nike sneakers (right footed and left footed), rubber ducks, notes in bottles, bodies and body parts, pumice (from volcanic eruptions), plastics, oil.
The appendices are not to be missed, especially:
urban legends of the sea
a million drifting messages
harmonics of the gyres

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book about the junk that floats in the ocean and the currents that take that junk all over the world. I read this as an audio, read by Eric Michael Summerer, who is a co-host of the dice tower and I met him in person at last year's GenCon. This made it seem as if the book was read to me by a friend. Other than reader, I would not recommend the book as it got a little long-winded.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir of a scientist who found his "calling." It is as full of the beauty of the oceans as it is of the travesties worked upon the seas by humans. It will make you think twice about buying that water in a plastic bottle and twice again, if you bought the bottle, about how to dispose of it.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dad told me some of the tales out of this one and I think I'll have to read it next. He said it got a little sciencey when he discussed ocean currents at great length, but otherwise it's about the wacky, wacky things that have washed up on shore around the world - yes, a whole shipping container full of rubber duckies, millions of messages-in-bottles, and much, much more.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written description of how the ocean currents and gyres work. Some very technical descriptions which you may gloss through, but the interesting results are clearly stated. Also gives an interesting perception of how oil in not the problem but that plastic is. Good for someone just interested in how the world works as well as an intro to the subject for a real scientist.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the science, expected more from "the story". Ebbesmeyer seems like a good enough guy and obviously an accomplished oceanographer, but the book overall was kind of dry and not as fun to read as I had hoped. I learned many things about the ocean that I did not previously know, so from that angle the book was a success. Just expected more.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quirky and informative book on little understood (by most) personalities of the oceans...the currents and gyres that are remarkably predictable and result in all sorts of wonderful discoveries. Not just a dry academic book there is also a lot of personal reflection, humor, and "ah ha" tidbits. Highly recommend.

[Richard]

(Excellent interview with the author on NPR's Science Friday, April 10, 2009.)

(And a good review at the New York Times.)

[Arlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes the wanderings of the objects found on the beaches of the world. Parts were fascinating...parts were boring. All in all definitely worth the time. It also serves as a warning about the health of the worlds oceans due to man's thoughtlessness and rampant consumerism.