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Toy Story.


If you happen to stroll along a West Coast beach this winter, and stumble on toy cars or party balloons washed ashore, give Curtis Ebbesmeyer Curtis Charles Ebbesmeyer is an American oceanographer who, in retirement, has studied the movement of flotsam. He came to public attention through his interest in The First Years' rubber ducks (actually Friendly Floatees  a call. He wants to hear from you.

Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer (scientist who studies oceans) in Seattle, Washington This page is protected from moves until disputes have been resolved on the .
The reason for its protection is listed on the protection policy page.
, has a gift for drift. From hockey gloves to rubber duckies, if it lands in the ocean, Ebbesmeyer tries to predict where it will wash up.

His goal: to learn more about how winds and ocean currents affect one another. After all, world winds whip Earth's oceans into vast currents (see map). Most oceanographers study the flow and direction of ocean currents from satellite data. Ebbesmeyer thinks tracking floating objects is a more accurate way to forecast where ocean currents travel. "Following pieces of trash all over the oceans has never been done before," he says.

Ebbesmeyer is now tracking 100,000 toy cars and one million party balloons that slid off a cargo ship after it was struck by a rogue wave rogue wave
n.
An unpredictable, abnormally large wave that occurs on a seemingly random basis in the oceans.
. The booty BOOTY, war. The capture of personal property by a public enemy on land, in contradistinction to prize, which is a capture of such property by such an enemy, on the sea.
     2.
 plunged into the Pacific Ocean south of Japan in January 1997. Using a computer program called Ocean Surface Current Simulations (OSCURS), Ebbesmeyer predicts the Kuroshio current, a major Pacific Ocean current, will carry the toys and balloons due east toward North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. . They should land on Washington and Oregon beaches by January 2000, he says. Of course, Ebbesmeyer has made predictions about other floating plastic toys Plastic Toys are an electro-rock band formed in late 2003 based in Southampton, UK. The 4-piece group are made up of Jon Plastic (Vocals/Guitars), Kitty Brooks (Bass), Si Jackson (Guitars) and Ben Coley (Drums).  before that didn't pan out. Could this be just another toy stow?
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Title Annotation:toy cars and balloons accidently dropped from a cargo ship tracked by oceanographer
Author:Cannell, Michael
Publication:Science World
Article Type:Brief Article
Date:Jan 11, 1999
Words:246
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