Drifting Rubber Duckies Ending 11-year Odyssey

DRIFTING RUBBER DUCKIES ENDING 11-YEAR ODYSSEY Being thrown from a container ship, drifting for more than a decade, bobbing through three oceans – it’s enough to turn a rubber duckie white. A floating flock of the bathtub toys is believed to be washing ashore somewhere along the New England coast, bleached and battered from a trans-Arctic journey. Oceanographers say the trip has taught them valuable lessons about the ocean’s currents. The toys have been adrift since 29,000 of them fell from a storm-tossed container ship en route from China to Seattle more than 11 years ago. From a point in the Pacific Ocean near the international date line, they floated along the Alaska coast, reaching the Bering Strait by 1995 and Iceland five years later. By 2001 they had floated to the area in the Atlantic where the Titanic sank. [The Associated Press – Patriot News 7/2003]