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Short Stuff: Friendly Floatees · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck Ahoy maydie. This is short stuff. It's a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: fun story. Yeah. Have you you've heard of this before? Right?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I have? And I mean it's about as fun as
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: an ecological disaster can get. I guess, well said, well said,
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  Speaker 1: And we are talking about an ecological disaster UM, and
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  Speaker 1: it's one that happens kind of frequently, which is UM
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the loss of a shipping container at sea. There's this
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: UM insurance company, a marine cargo insurance company called t RG,
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  Speaker 1: and they estimate that every year anywhere from to ten
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  Speaker 1: thousand shipping containers you know, those big giant shipping containers
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  Speaker 1: that double is like an entire semi truck. Up to
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  Speaker 1: ten thousand of those just fall overboard into the sea
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  Speaker 1: every year. Did they get those out? No? No, they're
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: going it's ten thousand, up to ten thousand these are
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: falling in every year. Like that's a problem at some point, right,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I guess not. I think we shipped that much stuff
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  Speaker 1: that they're like, well, these people are gonna have to
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: wait a month and we'll get them some more. No,
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  Speaker 1: I mean a problem for the ocean. Ohh, I thought
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  Speaker 1: she meant a problem for the consumer. I mean over
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  Speaker 1: ten years, Like it's up to a hundred thousand semitruck
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  Speaker 1: shipping containers, ten thousand lying on the ocean, ten thousand.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: What did I say, No, that's it over ten years though,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure
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  Speaker 1: it is a problem. Or um, it's a They always
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  Speaker 1: say that, um, A problem is a benefit in disguise,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: isn't that that saying? So they probably make lemonade out
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: of lemons down there. That's there's a window open. They
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: didn't know about all those metaphors. So you do make
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: a good point this this shipping effects nature. I mean,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: we talked about in a noise pollution episode just how
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: bad the shipping industry is for marine ecosystems. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: But we're here to talk about one specific container that
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  Speaker 1: had the cutest little ecological spill in history. The Ever
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  Speaker 1: Laurel was at sea. There was a bad storms Januar.
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  Speaker 1: It made it to port, but it lost a container
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  Speaker 1: along the way, and that container contained twenty eight thousand
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  Speaker 1: rubber duckies, frogs, beavers, and turtles called friendly floaties, and
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  Speaker 1: the doors opened and they were all released into the ocean,
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  Speaker 1: and that amazing. So these friendly float ees um there.
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  Speaker 1: There was some point moments after this, this disaster happened
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  Speaker 1: where all twenty eight thousand, almost twenty nine thousand friendly floaties,
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  Speaker 1: rubber duckies, rubber turtles, we're all just floating together in
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  Speaker 1: this one very local area of the sea. No human
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, saw this. So you can
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: just say, you have to imagine it in your mind's eye,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: but it's easy to do, and it's it's delightful in
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  Speaker 1: a way. It is delightful. But then they started to disperse,
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  Speaker 1: of course, because they're in the ocean, and of the
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight thousand nineteen thousand went south and started showing
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: up in places like Australia and Indonesia. UM. Some others
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  Speaker 1: went across the Southern Pacific and west to South America,
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  Speaker 1: and the rest headed north. And it's cute, but it
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  Speaker 1: is an environmental disaster. Somebody wrote a book called Moby Duck,
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  Speaker 1: which is even cuter. But another guy named Dr Curtis
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  Speaker 1: Ebbsmire said, you know what, I'm gonna make some limit
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  Speaker 1: out of this because I study ocean currents, and all
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  Speaker 1: of a sudden I have twenty eight thousand little specimens
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  Speaker 1: floating around, and I can see if I'm right about
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  Speaker 1: what I think the currents due down there. Yeah, because
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: those oceanographers usually use like booie transmitters, and those things
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  Speaker 1: are expensive and difficult to distribute and put out to see.
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  Speaker 1: Now they had twenty eight thousand of these things that
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  Speaker 1: they could basically use his stand ins for those booties,
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  Speaker 1: as long as you could kind of keep track of them.
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  Speaker 1: But Absmire went the other route. He's like, no, I'm
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  Speaker 1: gonna make predictions based on my models, and then we'll
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  Speaker 1: see if these things turn up where the models predict.
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  Speaker 1: And starting in nine six he predicted that, um, the
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  Speaker 1: first friendly floaties would start showing up in Washington State.
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  Speaker 1: I think he was a you dub professor, UM, so
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  Speaker 1: he talked about Washington specifically, and he was correct. They
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: started showing up in nine and that definitely caught the
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  Speaker 1: attention of the media from that point on. I wonder
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  Speaker 1: if when it happened he was like, oh man, I've
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: been wanting to release thirty rubber duckies for years now,
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  Speaker 1: and they just won't let me do it because it's
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  Speaker 1: not safe. Uh. I would guess he had those fantasies
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  Speaker 1: in his darkest moments. So let's take a break and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: think about that, and uh, come back and talk more
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  Speaker 1: about this. The Q just ecological disaster of all time.
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  Speaker 1: So they found the first ones of these in sit
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  Speaker 1: Alaska at the end of and then I think, you know,
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  Speaker 1: it took months and years for things, these things to
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  Speaker 1: kind of wash all over the world. And this was
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  Speaker 1: this was that guy's big chance, what's his name, Dr
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  Speaker 1: Curtis Ebbsmire, ebbs Meier's chance to see if his predictions
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  Speaker 1: are right. You're right, and he was right. Remember he
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  Speaker 1: started predicting him that they would show up in Washington.
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  Speaker 1: He's right about the first one. I didn't see how
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  Speaker 1: right he was about the rest. He was right about
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  Speaker 1: the rest almost exactly. Like one of the great triumphs
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  Speaker 1: of the Friendly Floaty Saga is that um Dr Curtis
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  Speaker 1: ebbsmires um models, where like these things are dead on
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  Speaker 1: it actually advanced oceanography as far as I can tell.
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  Speaker 1: So a lot of them ended up, like you said,
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  Speaker 1: all over the world, but the ones that really kind
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  Speaker 1: of gripped everybody the most were the ones that ended
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  Speaker 1: up in the North Atlantic up near Scandinavia and then
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  Speaker 1: eventually down to the UK. And the reason that these
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  Speaker 1: are so gripping is because they think that those are
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  Speaker 1: the ones that moved northward from this um wreck site
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  Speaker 1: and they went up past Alaska where the first ones
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  Speaker 1: are found, up into the Arctic, where they became frozen
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  Speaker 1: and ice, and because of the the conveyor belt by
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  Speaker 1: ocean currents even up that far north, the ice eventually
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  Speaker 1: moved its way eastward. And then as the ice got
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  Speaker 1: into warmer and warmer waters, that started to melt, which
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  Speaker 1: freed those friendly floaties, which means that they made their
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  Speaker 1: own kind of reverse northwest passage through the Arctic, which
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: people have been trying to do for hundreds of years.
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  Speaker 1: Now they're friendly float He's figured out, you just have
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to get trapped in ice for ten years. Yeah, Like
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  Speaker 1: they should not probably have gone north to come south
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  Speaker 1: into Europe normally. Like, there's no way you predicted that, right,
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  Speaker 1: I believe he did, really, Yes, he predicted that they
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  Speaker 1: would start showing up in um in the UK about
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  Speaker 1: ten years after the disaster, and they did, And I
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  Speaker 1: think it was because he had predicted they would go
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: north and it would take that long to make it across. Well,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: another good thing about this whole thing was that it
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  Speaker 1: did bring some more attention to the Great Pacific garbage Patch,
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  Speaker 1: something we talked about in the very early days of
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Uh that may not have even
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: been me. It was, of course the North Pacific subtropical gyre.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Uh and we talked about that garbage patch a few times,
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  Speaker 1: I think, but uh, some of them obviously made their
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: way there and just became a part of that disaster.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And uh So anytime a little bit of media attention
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: is going to come that that way, that's a good thing. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Between that guy Donovan Hones book Moby Duck and Curtis
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  Speaker 1: ebbsmires uh press that he got from his models and predictions,
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  Speaker 1: I feel like that might have been what introduced the
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  Speaker 1: average person or the media to the Great Pacific garbage paths.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I think this may have been what did it actually,
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  Speaker 1: because it really alerted people to just how long plastic
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: lasts in the ocean. Because those ones that entered the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Great Pacific Garbage Patch, they're never going to make land.
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  Speaker 1: They're gonna stay stuck in that circular current and then
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  Speaker 1: over time they're just gonna break down. Further and further
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  Speaker 1: into smaller and smaller plastic. It doesn't biodegrade at photodegrades,
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  Speaker 1: so chemically speaking, it keeps. It never breaks apart. It
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  Speaker 1: just gets smaller and smaller, and then it enters the
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  Speaker 1: food chain and once it's in there, it sticks around
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  Speaker 1: for a really long time, like hundreds and hundreds of years,
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  Speaker 1: which that's where that ecologic Old disaster a part came from. Right,
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  Speaker 1: I think that these things were supposed to he I think,
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  Speaker 1: he said, besides those that are out there forever. He said,
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  Speaker 1: I think the last ones will probably wash up somewhere
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  Speaker 1: in the UK. And you looked into his crystal ball
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  Speaker 1: and said maybe two thousand seven, And there was one
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  Speaker 1: found in Cornwall in two thousand seven, so he's right
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: about that. And they've become kind of hot tickets on eBay, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I think at least a grand is the most that's
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  Speaker 1: been paid for one that's definitely a first Year's Friendly
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  Speaker 1: floaty that was in that shipping container. What do you
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  Speaker 1: do with that thing though, that you paid a thousand
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  Speaker 1: dollars for? You hope somebody comes over and notices it
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  Speaker 1: on the shelf and just conversation starter. I guess I gets.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why else you would want to possess it,
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  Speaker 1: And there there's like a whole group of beach combers.
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  Speaker 1: It's like a really big deal that I think that
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  Speaker 1: that would be a prize. But I think being a
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  Speaker 1: beach comer, you'd want to find it yourself rather than
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: buying it on eBay. Who knows. Yeah, I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna look anyone's yung. No, definitely not. If
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  Speaker 1: you need that to get a good conversation going in
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  Speaker 1: your life and more pepper to you. You got anything else?
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  Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Okay, Well that's it for short
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  Speaker 1: stuff everybody. And that's it for friendly floaties because they've
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: all made land or photodegraded into almost nothing by now.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: And since I said that short stuff is out. Stuff
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: you should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
• 10:30
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• 10:33
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