All lost at sea on the trail of Moby Duck

Photo / Nicola Topping

They are small, yellow and designed to endure nothing more stressful than a quick journey around a bathtub.

But after almost 20 years lost at sea, a flotilla of plastic ducks has been hailed for revolutionising mankind's knowledge of ocean science.

The toys are part of a shipment of 29,000 packaged ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers made in China for a United States firm. They were in a crate that fell off the deck of a container ship during a journey across the Pacific from Hong Kong in January 1992.

Since that moment, they have bobbed tens of thousands of kilometres. Some washed up on the shores of Hawaii and Alaska; others have been stuck in Arctic ice. A few crossed the site near Newfoundland where the Titanic sank, and at least one is believed to have been found on a beach in Scotland. Now the creatures, nicknamed the "Friendly Floatees" by various broadcasters who have followed their progress over the years, have been immortalised in a book titled Moby-Duck.

It not only chronicles their extraordinary odyssey, and what it has taught us about currents, but also lays bare a largely ignored threat to the marine environment: the vast numbers of containers that fall off the world's cargo ships.

No one knows exactly how often containers are lost at sea, because of the secretive nature of the international shipping industry.

But Donovan Hohn, the book's author, says that oceanographers put the figure at anything from several hundred to 10,000 a year. While some sink, others burst open, throwing their contents into the upper layer of the ocean and posing a threat to wildlife.

Plastic debris can be particularly hazardous, eventually breaking into small particles which are eaten by fish and mammals.

"I've heard tales of containers getting lost that are full of those big plastic bags that dry cleaners use," says Hohn.

"I've also heard of crates full of cigarettes going overboard, which of course end up having their butts ingested by marine animals. In fact, one of the end notes in my book lists the contents of a dead whale's belly: it was full of trash.

"Plastic pollution is a real problem. It's far from the greatest environmental danger to the ocean, but it is one of the most visible."

That meant it could be important as a symbol of less visible damage, such as overfishing, agricultural run-off and ocean warming.

The fate of the ducks has been studied by a small band of enthusiasts since six months after the accident, when the ducks began to wash up in large numbers on the beaches of Alaska, Canada, and America's Pacific northwest.

- Independent