Curt Ebbesmeyer Profile

Curt Ebbesmeyer says that when investigating the paths of ocean currents, he uses every tool available. He studies satellite images and data from buoys. He tosses objects into the water to see where they go.

Then in May of 1990, his toolbox grew a lot bigger. A storm south of the Alaskan peninsula knocked 21 containers off a ship delivering goods from Korea to the United States. Four containers burst open, releasing 61,000 brand new Nike sneakers and boots to the mercy of the winds and surface currents. The following Thanksgiving, hundreds of shoes appeared on beaches in northern Washington. By spring, beachcombers had collected shoes from Oregon to the Queen Charlotte Islands off the Canadian coast. The press picked up the story, and Curt was soon on the case. Through some detective work he learned the source of the shoes and the number that had likely been set adrift. He also learned that each shoe had a distinct serial number making it the largest instantaneous release of numbered objects at one time.

Oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer displays well traveled tub toys.

In January 1992, his toolbox grew even larger. A storm washed several containers from a ship bound from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington. One container carried 29,000 bathtub toys. Ten months later, plastic ducks, turtles, frogs, and beavers began washing up near Sitka, Alaska. A new experiment had begun and Curt’s career as a pioneer in the study of floating debris was in full swing.

Today, Curt presides over a network of thousands of beachcombers. These volunteers and hobbyists walk the beaches of the world, snatching up shoes, hockey equipment, surveyor stakes, bowling balls, Lego’s, tobacco jars, utility poles, fishing gear, survival suits (with and without body parts), and the occasional message in a bottle, and report their findings to Curt. Curt studies the information, thinks about what it all means, and compiles these stories into a newsletter, Beachcombers Alert, which he mails to his subscribers four times a year. If a new cargo spill occurs, Curt alerts his network about what to look for.

Curt has spent his entire 40-year career studying ocean currents. From 1965 to 1974, he worked for Mobil Oil Corp. There he tracked icebergs over the Grand Banks where Mobil had placed its drilling rigs. If an iceberg got too close to a rig, he helped figure out how to tow it away. (It takes a lasso and three large ships.) Curt then freelanced for Evans-Hamilton, an oceanographic consulting firm based in Seattle, until he retired in 2003. During that time, he studied eddies and ocean turbulence deep below the surface, helped track the 1989 Exxon Valdes oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and studied how the currents in Puget Sound in Washington affected sewage outflows, oil spills, and migrating salmon.

Now retired, Curt devotes his attention to the random debris that enters the sea. Floating debris has become a permanent feature of the world’s oceans. This junk takes a terrible environmental toll, especially on marine birds and mammals. For Curt, however, each item also has the potential to tell a fascinating story as well as contribute valuable information on ocean currents. The remarkable staying power of many of these objects makes them ideal scientific instruments. Objects may drift about for decades and remain intact. By contrast, many of the sophisticated (and expensive) buoys that oceanographers deploy may only provide data for about five years. The sheer numbers of shoes and bath toys also ensures that many will be recovered, providing Curt with plenty of data for his analysis.