Almost 20 years ago the container ship Ever Laurel encountered rough weather in the mid-Pacific, causing it to lose cargo, including children's bath toys.
The rubber ducks moreso than the beavers and frogs caught the public's imagination, and Donovan Hohn, a self-confessed landlubber, quit his teaching job to investigate how some of these toys were swept around the Bering Strait into the Atlantic whilst others found themselves drawn into the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, a vast island of floating non bio-degradable rubbish created by gyres or currents.
Hohn’s humorous account describes how studying the ducks' movements has helped scientists better understand ocean gyres, but it is also a sobering reflection on how containers and their contents lost at sea can have a devastating effect on marine life.
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