Acquire Today Flotsametrics And The Floating World: How One Mans Obsession With Runaway Sneakers And Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science Designed And Illustrated By Curtis Ebbesmeyer Readily Available As Digital Paper
first, I thought this book was a simpleif very interestingaccounting of Curtis Ebbesmeyer's career in oceanography, Ebbesmeyer has done some very interesting studies of holistic ocean currents, When a ship loses a buoyant cargo, such as a few thousand Nike sneakers or highly distinctive bath toys, Ebbesmeyer has beachcombers contact him with the details of where the cargo washes up.
Using this serendipitous data, he has made some very useful observations about ocean flow and specifically gyres, A gyreas I learned from this bookis a gigantic on the continental scale closed loop of water around which flotsam like Nike shoes and rubber duckies drifts.
Ebbesmeyer was able to use the data provided by this flotsam to chart the eleven ocean gyres in some detail in terms of their orbital period, dimensions, orbital speeds, and harmonic relationships.
The whole thing is very interesting and charming until he reminds his readers that he is able to do this because humans are dumping massive quantities of garbage into the seas.
Ebbesmeyer makes an extremely vallid point about the incredibly long lifespan of plastic in the sea, the threat it presents to marine and human life, and how eventually it will come back to haunt us.
This is a very good and valuable book I highly recommend it, I found this book completely fascinating, The author studied global ocean currents through flotsam and jetsam do you know the difference, It's interesting to read the tales of the Nike shoes, the rubber duckies, messages in bottles, volcanic ash and more, It is sobering to read about the great ocean garbage patches eternally trapped within the gyres, It's sad to read about the ever increasing concentration of plastic in the seas, The stories of the human drifters through history are amazing, particularly the Japanese "Hyoryumin", If you drop something into the ocean, whether a rubber ducky, a dead body, or a message in a bottle, it's likely to chart a path that will tell you something about the object in question, as well as about the water in which it's floating.
It would seem that the data you might get from this would be limited, and mostly a minor curiosity unless you really like rubber duckies, are intent on making sure that dead body doesn't get recovered, or you're bound and determined to make sure your bottled message gets through to someone.
Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer's delightful and informative "Flotsametrics and the Floating World" does a very good job of showing that we not only have a lot to learn from floating "stuff," but that unlocking much of the course of history and determining the course of the future is tied to watching how that stuff floats on the water.
It turns out that the ocean is not just a series of various seas defined mostly by their temperature and the land masses they surround.
Rather, the oceans are a kind of machine composed of interlocking gyres whose individual courses and interactions are performing a figurative dance, accompanied by a literal song.
It turns out their harmonics produce some of the most beautiful music in the universe which, alas, we lack the ears to hear, Call it the aquatic version of the Musica Universalis/Harmony of the Spheres about which philosophers have hypothesized for centuries, and poets have waxed since they had tongues to speak.
It's popular science aimed at the curious layman, told by a brilliant and enthusiastic man whose sense of joy is infectious and whose presentation is clear.
With illustrations, charts, photos, and some cool appendices, especially the one about the various myths of the sea, which takes pains to judge the credibility or ridiculousness of the most commonlycited legends.
Alas, no Flying Dutchman is included in this part, Recommended, regardless. This is a memoir of a scientist who found his "calling, " It is as full of the beauty of the oceans as it is of the travesties worked upon the seas by humans, It will make you think twice about buying that water in a plastic bottle and twice again, if you bought the bottle, about how to dispose of it.
This book gave me a much greater understanding of how the ocean works, I really enjoyed the enthusiasm that Curtis Ebbesmeyer told his story, From now on beachcombing will be much more interesting and I will think twice every time I use something made of plastic, Dad told me some of the tales out of this one and I think I'll have to read it next, He said it got a little sciencey when he discussed ocean currents at great length, but otherwise it's about the wacky, wacky things that have washed up on shore around the world yes, a whole shipping container full of rubber duckies, millions of messagesinbottles, and much, much more.
I always enjoy books written by passionate, obsessed science geeks, This is not a particularly linear book, but wow, it's interesting, It does point out in depressing detail just how badly we've screwed ourselves with plastics, I knew about part of the plastic problem in the oceans from reading the magnificent books of Carl Safina, but I didn't know that there are places in the ocean where lookalike particles of plastic outnumber planktonto.
Makes it hard to get a decent meal, if plankton is what one eats,
The work Ebbesmeyer has done on learning about and explicating the big gyres is simply fascinating, As is what washes up on the beach, and when, and how, The full story about the Nike spill is here, as well as the adorable tub toys that are still washing up, Thanks, Dr. Brazelton! sigh
The writing is hard to follow at some points,
and wildly discursive at others, But worth it. This is an interesting book about the junk that floats in the ocean and the currents that take that junk all over the world.
I read this as an audio, read by Eric Michael Summerer, who is a cohost of the dice tower and I met him in person at last year's GenCon.
This made it seem as if the book was read to me by a friend, Other than reader, I would not recommend the book as it got a little longwinded,
Excellent interview with the author on sitelinkNPR's Science Friday, April,,Very interesting science, really interested in the junk patch off South Point, I wondered why all those plastic beads were in the water.
And a good review at the sitelinkNew York Times,
Not as interested in his personal history, at least in print, but I would have a beer with the guy, this is thepredecessor work to the more widely readsitelinkMoby Duck, about,plastic bath toys lost off a cargo ship in a storm at sea and how oceanographers tracked them, plus additional material about ocean currents another accident sneakers and a little about some of the personalities.
Ebbesmeyer I guess just had a weaker marketing team or possibly there's something to some claims on this entry that his writing is just a tad weaker.
it's nearly the same exact book, but for some reason Hahn got the awards and the sales,
second random comment about the book is that it's said every human being has one book inside of them, and Ebbesmeyer may be cast in precise point, as he mentions he's retiring,, and this appears to be his one full booklength work.
contains odd very odd passage about the oceanographers' treatment of a colleague's deceased wife, but other than that, appears to be pretty much professional.
not an absolute, but closer to thethan themoderately recommended,
since following the crowd usually works, probably MOBY DUCK is the better read for time/cash, but there's nothing too horribly unreadable about this work if this is what enters your hands.
I liked this, but it wasn't what I expected,
It's mostly an autobiography, A lot of personal info, I really didn't care about that,
Secondly it is pretty hard science, That may sound weird, but everything about this book makes it sound VERY pop sciencey and I would say it's a few steps more serious than that.
I wanted a pop science book about rubber duckies, This was still good, and incredibly interesting but there were some SLOOOOOOOW sections, With graphs.
Even with all the science, I don't feel like I have a good grasp or ability to guess why a certain type of object goes to which beach.
There's some computer model discussed in the book that can do that, but, obviously I don't have that model, :
I also wished there was more on what to DO about plastic trash and how to fix it, This book describes the wanderings of the objects found on the beaches of the world, Parts were fascinating parts were boring. All in all definitely worth the time, It also serves as a warning about the health of the worlds oceans due to man's thoughtlessness and rampant consumerism, author Ebbesmeyer is and indie scientist, which is pretty hard to do, and concentrates on the the flotsam and jetsam found around oceans to try and figure out currents, climate, pollution, etc.
. . He is sort of a controversial character, but writes a pretty good book and also has a newsletter about/for beachcombers, He is integral to book "Moby Duck" too
sitelinkMobyDuck: The True Story of,Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
Though Hohn is by far a better writer, this Ebbesmeyer book has LOTS of pics and maps.
so really should be read simultaneously, Plus has cool messageinabottle charts in appendix, : Well written description of how the ocean currents and gyres work, Some very technical descriptions which you may gloss through, but the interesting results are clearly stated, Also gives an interesting perception of how oil in not the problem but that plastic is, Good for someone just interested in how the world works as well as an intro to the subject for a real scientist,
Wow, so many things about the natural world that I had no idea about, This is a fascinating book about the forces that make the oceans move, layer by layer, mile by mile and the flotsam and jetsom that move with the currents and gyres and snarks and floating islands.
Ebbesmeyer discusses everything from the oil industry to shipping practices and mispractices to massive junk beaches in Hawai'i to sewage runoff in the Puget Sound to how flotsam helped early explorers navigate uncharted waters.
"Huh, who knew" was the repeating phrase in my head,
The Flotsametrics and the Floating World's style is engaging enough, though sometimes I skimmed over the highly "sciencey" stuff, Still, this kind of data analysis is surely helpful for more methodical minds than mine, A good book check it out, Not really an explanation for laypeople of how and why waves, currents, and wind transport plastic bottles to, say, a beach in Belize, This book is more a chronology of Curtis Ebbesmeyer's life with anecdotes about his work that require fair amount of prior oceanography knowledge to appreciate.
But kudos to my colleague Eric Scigliano for capturing Ebbesmeyer's lively personality, Fascinating book about, generally, everything that floats around on the oceans, and the currents and winds that move them, Very cool stories about the floating bath toys, sneakers, message bottles, and so on, A bit tedious to read, as part autobiography and part science, Good general information. If you are willing to tolerate some dry chapters and passages that probably only an oceanographer would truly appreciate, there are treasures to be found in this book.
Ebbesmeyer tells some wonderful true stories that teach interesting information about the sea, There are also passages which are very poignant and poetic deeply moving, wonderful, and insightful, Overall, I would recommend the book as a "good read, "
A passionate study of the currents of the seas through the observation of flotsam things that float on the ocean,
There are stories and statistics of Nike sneakers right footed and left footed, rubber ducks, notes in bottles, bodies and body parts, pumice from volcanic eruptions, plastics, oil.
The appendices are not to be missed, especially:
urban legends of the sea
a million drifting messages
harmonics of the gyres NPR Science Friday
very informative and FUN! I really enjoyed this book some of the science was a little over my head but I was able to grasp most of it.
Fascinating look at the oceans made me want to beachcomb!! This book is a fascinating mishmosh of personal narrative, oceanic lore, hard science and various notes on beachcombing, sneaker waterfalls that is inaccurate, but it's what came to mind and maybe will make you more curious to read the book! the history of plastic, etc.
Some of the stuff about ocean currents was a little hard for me to grasp and I wish I had a person nearby who could explain it, because it seemed important and interesting.
I highly recommend this book if you are curious about and/or care about oceans and currents and what happens to things that fall or get dropped into oceans, etc.
“Ebbesmeyers goal is noble and fresh: to show how the flow of ocean debris around the world reveals the music of the worlds oceans.
”
New York Times Book
Through the fascinating stories of flotsam, one of the Earths greatest secrets is revealed.
In Flotsametrics and the Floating World, maverick scientist Curtis Ebbesmeyer details how his obsession with floating garbagefrom rubber ducks to discarded Nike sneakershelped to revolutionize ocean science.
Scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, host of CBC TVs “The Nature of Things,” calls Flotsametrics and the Floating World “Science and storytelling at its very best.
” “A very enjoyable, if at times dark, book” Nature, it is must reading for anyone interested in Oceanography, Environmental Science, and the way our world works.
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