Book Info
Genre: Nonfiction, Popular Science, Travel
LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/work/book/291465892
Acquired from: Little Free Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA [see visit log]
Started reading: July 29, 2025
Finished reading: August 6, 2025
Review
(Written August 6, 2025; cross-posted to LibraryThing)
Overall I enjoyed this book, though I think the title/cover does it a bit of a disservice. It makes it seem like a very scientific book with a lot of history about plastic ducks floating in the ocean, but really it’s more of a travel memoir with some popular science bits mixed in. The last two sections in particular were heavy on the personal anecdotes and less about plastic ducks– possibly because the author hadn’t seen any for years by that point.
That said, it DID make me more interested about oceanography and oceanographers. I enjoyed the mix of travel, science, and history. The author describes people vividly, without being rude about their quirks, and you can tell he likes people. I’m uncertain if it was worth it for him to quit his job and pursue the plastic ducks (especially since he had a young child at the time!) but I suppose that’s just me being judgemental. (Although considering how many times he quotes Arctic explorers, I can’t help but wonder if wanting to explore himself mixed with fear of fatherhood led to suddenly wanting to go on a multi-year quest. Anyway.)
Reading Updates
Page 1: Found a promo postcard for 4Ocean.com inside the book and am using it as a bookmark
Page 22: Really nice mini bio of one of his students, who partially inspired him to start investigating this story. I love when teachers love their students!
Page 27: He has ambivalent feelings about his impending newborn child and suddenly he wants to go on a year-long adventure in the Arctic, oh brother. Is he seriously going to leave his wife with a newborn for a year? I hope she divorces him
Update: Author blurb in the inside cover says he’s still married and has multiple children
Page 31: Beachcombers’ Alert! website
Page 36: Getting into the science stuff now. New-to-me terms: OSCURS, geostrophic, Coriolus force
Also noticing author uses a lot of $5 words which makes me a) feel smarter when I know the definitions and b) feel sad that many books (and other publications) nowadays have “dumbed” themselves down to a lower reading level. This book came out in 2011 which isn’t even that long ago, but it feels like it’s from a different era entirely.
I’ve dumbed my own writing down on my for-profit blog, as that’s the general suggestion from all the experts (“aim for a 6th grade reading level”). I didn’t mind it at the time, as generally I think it’s good to be understandable/accessible to many people, but now I feel a little disappointed in myself for not pushing back.
Page 37, Footnote 1:
Confusingly, the conventions for indicating the directions of currents contradict those for indicating the direction of winds. An easterly wind blows from east to west; an easterly current flows west to east.
WHAT???
Page 42: Quote Ebbesmeyer: “But 60 percent of plastic will float, and the 60 percent that does float will never sink because it doesn’t absorb water; it fractures into ever smaller pieces. That’s the difference. There are things afloat now that will never sink.” This is horrifying!!
Page 47:
Let’s draw a bath. Let’s set a rubber duck afloat. Look at it wobbling there. What misanthrope, what damp, drizzly November of a sourpuss upon beholding a rubber duck afloat, does not feel a Crayola ray of sunshine brightening his gloomy heart?
Page 51: He’s taking a ferry from Bellingham, WA to Sitka, AK— I didn’t know you could do that! I need to see if it’s still possible. Also people pitch tents on the deck to sleep in; cute!
Page 68: New-to-me word: jeremiad (that’s a $10 word right there)
Page 83: Gulf of Alaska Keeper, charity that cleans up beaches
Page 114: Some discussion about research info plastic particles and their potential effects on animals/people since 1970s, but nothing about microplastics. Maybe that’s a newer thing?
Page 159:
Now, in the Information Age, if you wish to combat (…) the armies of corporate publicists waging endless ad campaigns, including green-washing campaigns of the sort devised by Keep America Beautiful, then you have to be media savvy, and like a guerrilla warrior in the information battlefield you have to exploit your adversaries’ weaknesses. The problem is that in the universal propaganda arms race that has issued from the disinformation age, no one trust anyone, and doubtful citizens are free to luxuriate in distractions, while overconfident citizens are allowed to pick and choose whatever factoids and sound bites confirm their self-serving predispositions.
Page 189:
What’s most nefarious about plastic, however, is the way it invites fantasy, the way it pretends to deny the laws of matter, as if something—anything—could be made from nothing; the way it is intended to be thrown away but chemically engineered to last. By offering the false promise of disposability, of consumption without cost, it has helped create a culture of wasteful make-believe, an economy of forgetting.
Page 208: Ann Arbor mentioned! That’s where I’m reading this book, actually. 😀
Page 267: Traveling by freighter used to be one of those cool offbeat things hardcore travel nerds were into (despite how much more expensive it was than to just fly or even take a regular cruise) but since COVID most freighters stopped taking passengers altogether.
Page 289: This guy is 35 when he did this and I’m 37 and haven’t done this. Hard not to compare yourself to others as you creep towards middle age— no wonder people go into midlife crisis mode.
Word List
- Geostrophic: “(meteorology) Relating to or arising from the deflective force exerted on the atmosphere due to the rotation of the earth.”
- Hydrocephalic: “A person who has hydrocephalus” (aka “water on the brain”) .
- Jeremiad: “A long speech or prose work that bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and often contains a prophecy of its coming downfall.”
- Kidult: “An adult who participates in youth culture and activities traditionally intended for children.”
- Millihelen: “A unit of measurement of beauty, corresponding to the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.”
- Naufragia: “To be shipwrecked.”
- Nurdle: “A cylindrical pre-production plastic pellet used in manufacturing and packaging.”
- Olivine: ” Any of a group of olive green magnesium-iron silicate minerals that crystallize in the orthorhombic system.”
- Pemmican: “A food made from meat which has been dried and beaten into a paste, mixed with berries and rendered fat, and shaped into little patties. [from 18th c.]”
- Sclerotic: “(figurative) Hard and insular; resistant to change.”
- Somniferously: “(pharmacology) causing or inducing sleep, normally with harmful overtones.”
Book Wishlist
📚 Blue Meridian by Peter Matthiessen, about a search for a great white shark
📚 Farthest North: The Epic Adventure of a Visionary Explorer by Fridtjof Nansen (Project Gutenberg: Vol.1, Vol. 2), a memoir of an Arctic expedition where everyone survived for once
📚 FLOTSAMETRICS AND THE FLOATING WORLD: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, a memoir from the guy who writes the Beachcombers’ Alert! newsletter and major “character” in this book
📚 Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte, about the American waste system
📚 In the Sargasso Sea by Thomas Allibone Janvier (Project Gutenberg) about a guy who unwillingly joins a slave ship and later gets marooned in a ships’ graveyard
📚 The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America’s Youngest Consumers by Eric Clark
📝 “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin
📚 Wilderness by Rockwell Kent (Project Gutenberg), about a father and sun spending a winter in rural Alaska in 1918
See also: Books Read (2025) / All Reading Logs
tozka | 📖 reading log: moby-duck by donovan hohn