'Friendly Floatee' plastic duck

Toy, 'The First Years' 'Friendly Floatee', yellow plastic duck, swept overboard in North Pacific in 1992 and washed up in Sitka, Alaska. Used by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and other oceanographers, to track drift patterns.

These plastic ducks were part of a consignment of nearly 30,000 plastic toys that fell into the North Pacific from a container ship in 1992. Many of these toys inadvertently became part of a massive scientific study: beachcombers have been finding them ever since, helping oceanographers refine their models of ocean surface currents.