SPILL CASE STORIES

Through the years, there have been some famous instances when freighters have accidently dumped cargo into the ocean capable of floating. These cargo disasters provide scientists with an opportunity to track ocean currents by tracking the path of the spills. Two such spills are described below. In addition, millions of smaller "spills" of plastic have be tracked in their contamination of our oceans.
 
After reading each instance,
 
a. locate the spills on the ocean_currents_map and
b. record your thoughts on the following questions in your Journal:

- How do the objects move in the water? Do they float or sink?
- In what direction are they traveling?
- What might affect the path of the spills along the way?
- How fast might the objects travel? What might affect their speed?
- Where are they likely to go and where might they end up?
 bfeldman

1.) The Case of the Shipwrecked Shoes

On May 27, 1990, the freighter Hansa Carrier, en route from Korea to the United States, encountered a severe North Pacific storm. Some 61,000 athletic shoes were spilled into the Pacific. They traveled upside down and were carried in the ocean currents. Because they become waterlogged and travel low in the water, the sneakers were less vulnerable to winds and therefore a good indication of currents.
 
Where They Went
Scientists Curt Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham accumulated reports of 1,600 floating objects. Using a computer program called the Ocean Surface Current Simulations (OSCURS), they produced a simulation that predicted the first shoes would reach Vancouver Island 220 days after the spill. Their predictions were relatively close! About a year after the spill, beachcombers along the Oregon, Washington, and Canadian coasts found thousands of shoes washing ashore.

Scientists think many shoes that washed up during the winter months may have been carried by strong northward currents, whereas others that landed in the spring encountered southerly moving currents—notably the California current which would eventually carry surviving shoes west back across the Pacific. Indeed, as the scientists were preparing to publish their findings in the American Geophysical Union’s publication EOS, they received reports of shoes being found on the north end of the Big Island of Hawaii. The great majority of recovered sneakers proved to be wearable!
 

2.) The Case of the Rubber Toys

On January 10, 1992, while traveling from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington, a container boat carrying thousands of toys ran into a severe storm and spilled its cargo. The plastic highly susceptible to surface wind speed and direction.

Where They Went
By November 1992, hundreds of plastic bathtub toys (yellow ducks, blue turtles, red beavers, and green frogs) were being found on the beaches near Sitka, Alaska. The toys passed the point where the athletic shoes landed, then veerednorthward to begin traveling counterclockwise around the Gulf of Alaska gyre. They then went north through the Unimak Pass into the Bering Sea where they became trapped and frozen in the transpolar drift around the North Pole. In a few years the ducks should be swimming in the North Atlantic, where they will be picked up by the eastward moving Gulf Stream.
On whose beaches might they end up?
 
Look at a map of the ocean currents:
http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/global-ecology.php
 
From WRI - World Resources Institute
 
For an update, read:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8534052.stm

http://oceanmotion.org/html/research/ebbesmeyer.htm

3.) Plastics Collections

Scientists have discovered areas of both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean in which plastic debric collect.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8534052.stm (Atlantic Ocean)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch (Pacific Ocean)

THINK: Where does YOUR "stuff" go? Does any get out into the ocean?

How hard it would it be to clean up these spills? Should there be international rules to govern the solid waste of cruise ships and freighters?