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

Ebbesmeyer, Curtis; Scigliano, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061558419 ISBN 13: 9780061558412

Publisher: Smithsonian, 2009

Synopsis

“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.

About this title

About the Authors

Curtis Ebbesmeyer holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington. Media worldwide have turned to his expertise on ocean currents and floating objects. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Eric Scigliano, winner of Livingston and AAAS prizes for reporting, has written for Harper's, New Scientist, the New York Times, and many other publications. His books include Puget Sound, Michelangelo's Mountain, and Love, War, and Circuses.

From the Back Cover

Pioneering oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer unravels the mystery of marine currents, uncovers the astonishing story of flotsam, and changes the world's view of trash, the ocean, and our global environment.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. He's been a consulting oceanographer for multinational firms and a lead scientist on international research expeditions, but he's never held a conventional academic appointment. He seized the world's imagination as no other scientist could when he and his worldwide network of beachcomber volunteers traced the ocean's currents using thousands of sneakers and plastic bath toys spilled from storm-tossed freighters.

Now, for the first time, Ebbesmeyer tells the story of his lifelong struggle to solve the sea's mysteries while sharing his most surprising discoveries. He recounts how flotsam has changed the course of history—leading Viking mariners to safe harbors, Columbus to the New World, and Japan to open up to the West—and how it may even have made the origin of life possible. He chases icebergs and floating islands; investigates ocean mysteries from ghost ships to a spate of washed-up severed feet on Canadian beaches; and explores the enormous floating "garbage patches" and waste-heaped "junk beaches" that collect the flotsam and jetsam of industrial society. Finally, Ebbesmeyer reveals the rhythmic and harmonic order in the vast oceanic currents called gyres—"the heartbeat of the world "—and the threats that global warming and disintegrating plastic waste pose to the seas . . . and to us.

Reviews

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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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

Edition details

• Publisher: Smithsonian
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061558419
• ISBN 13: 9780061558412
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304