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Floating junk

Web posted June 3, 1998

Associated Press

CHARLOTTE -- Curtis Ebbesmeyer will spend his summer waiting for wet kisses.

Hershey's Kisses, that is.

The pre-emiment expert on flotsam also is on the lookout for news of bite-sized chocolates, Tootsie Rolls, Werther's butterscotches and Legos.

Because of last year's weather, influenced by El Nino, Ebbesmeyer expects Southeastern strands to be littered with some of these items, which tumbled from ships.

``I'm the guy who's interested in everything that floats,'' said Ebbesmeyer, who edits Beachcombers' Alert! on the Internet. ``To me, what's on the surface is more mysterious than what's underneath. Things that float are so transitory, and are around for a short period of time.

``No one knows what's out there. Twenty to 30 boats are abandoned each year. A thousand containers are lost overboard each year. Whatever humans use, it's out there floating.''

In February 1997, more than 3 million Legos were lost at sea after a 40-foot container plunged from a freighter during a storm off Land's End, England.

A month later, near Nantucket Island off the Massachusetts coast, a storm rocked 23 steel drums off the container ship Pol American, spilling household goods, shoes, glassware, a vehicle and millions of pieces of candy into the drink.

Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer from Seattle, is interested in the whereabouts of the armada of Legos headed for the East Coast, and the flotilla of Hershey's Kisses and Werther's candies journeying south from Nantucket.

Ebbesmeyer's real job is helping companies figure how currents distribute oil or pollution spills. Flotsam became a passionate hobby in 1991 after his mother called him about Nikes washing ashore along the Pacific Northwest coast.

He and another scientist discovered that the previous May, thousands of pairs of Nikes had spilled into the ocean from a freighter between Korea and the West Coast. They tracked currents propelling the shoes to Vancouver Island, 220 days after the accident.

Three years ago, millions of toys were spilled into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan. He's been tracking that voyage ever since.

Ebbesmeyer says it takes flotsam 15 months to make a trans-Atlantic trip, and about the same amount of time for the Werther's candies to make their way south to the Outer Banks.

Ten percent of what's lost on one side of the Atlantic makes it to the other. ``So if you drank 100 bottles of beer and dropped them into the water off the coast of England, expect 10 to be reported here,'' Ebbesmeyer said.

The Legos were bound for a packaging plant in Connecticut when a storm whipped the freighter Tokio 100 degrees in 10 seconds. Sixty-three containers snapped off the boat, including the one with 5 million Lego elements.

Hundreds washed up at Cornwall, England. Much of the rest presumably set sail for the States.

Most likely will dock in Florida, but many could catch a ride on the Gulf Stream to the Carolinas, Ebbesmeyer said.