Tuesday 24 July 2007

Duck Escapes Bathtub.......

No comment.



UPDATED!

An update is necessary.
I have been accused of Photoshoppage.
So, I'd better explain. First, thanks Red Dirt Girl and Rod, for believing me capable of such a feat, truth is my photoshop skills are non-existent.
"
Twelve years and counting —On January 10, 1992, 28,800 turtles, ducks, beavers and frogs packed in a cargo container — called Floatees by the manufacturer — splashed into the mid-Pacific, where the 45th parallel intersects the International Date Line (44.7°N, 178.1°E). During August- September, 1992, after 2,200 miles adrift, hundreds beached near Sitka, Alaska. Twelve years later, in 2004, beachcombers were still finding the bath-time critters."
Now it's fifteen years... The first ducks to cross the atlantic are drifting towards Europe, expected to hit the beaches of Cornwall, and Normandy any time now. Dr Curtis Ebbermayer has been tracking them, and other drifting cargoes, which have become an unexpected tool in tracking ocean currents. ""It's amazing what a duck can teach you," Ebbesmeyer says. "There was one container load of turtles, ducks, beavers and frogs, twenty-nine thousand in a single container that went overboard in the middle of the Pacific," he says.

The small, plastic adventurers were accidentally dumped into the ocean in January 1992. Pushed by winds and currents the ducks were carried to Alaska where thousands washed ashore.

But hundreds more would have been swept up thru Bering Straight and so far north they would be frozen in the Arctic icepack. Moving slowly with the ice across the Pole, Ebbesmeyer predicted the frozen flotilla would take five or six years to reach the North Atlantic and thaw."
Here's a link to a website.
It's worth noting the manufacturers offer a reward for each drift-duck returned with details of its capture position and date.
However, they are worth much bigger money on ebay. Allegedly $1,000!
I'd like to claim the giant one in my blog was a mutant ocean wanderer. But if I'm honest, I'll confess it is part of an art installation on the Loire Estuary, in France. The artist's site is HERE.


5 comments:

  1. Did you mean bathtug? I think you did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. you photo-shopped this one, didn't you ......

    i KNOW you did ......

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now that's quite a duck!!!
    Where is it?
    Oh .... I guess RDG 'splained it.
    Foto-chop ....
    hmmmm... Actually, I saw a two story inflatable "rubber duck" at the Kansas City Hilton once upon a time. Maybe it migrated?
    Thanx,
    Quack, Quack!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Shazaam!!!
    The real deal, a quacked fact!
    Maybe I need a big hot air duck balloon.
    This duck thing is really catching on!
    Quack, Quack!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Its.its...its...
    MOBY DUCK!!!
    "Avast! lower away and after him...the tune we pull to , me boys, is "a Stove Boat or a Dead Duck"....I think ye do look brave...I'll hunt him on both sides of land and all sides of earth before I give him up!...till he spouts black blood and rolls dead-out.."

    ReplyDelete


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