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James Poulson / Daily Sitka Sentinel via AP
Beachcomber Emmitt Andersen, 12, holds up a plastic card set adrift by NOAA in the 1970s that he found in Sitka, Alaska.
A plastic card dropped into the ocean 33 years ago has been found on the coast of Alaska, after a potential 88,000-mile journey.
The drift card was one of thousands put into the Bering Sea by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as part of a project to find out where oil would go if there was a spill.
About the size of a postcard, it offered a reward of $1 for its return in three languages: English, Japanese and Russian.
It was found on a beach at Sealion Cove, near Sitka, Alaska, last month by 12-year-old middle school student and keen beachcomber Emmitt Anderson. "We never know what we're going to find ... I just like to find stuff. When I don't find stuff, I'm not very happy," Anderson told the Daily Sitka Sentinel newspaper.
'Amazingly good condition'
His father Steve contacted NOAA and was put in touch with oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who tracks flotsam as it rides the world's currents.
Ebbesmeyer told msnbc.com that Anderson's drift card had likely been caught in the Aleut gyre, circulating ocean currents that take three years to make an 8,000-mile orbit.
"The question is how many times did it go around? I think it's likely it went around once, it could have gone round 11 times. It's possible it went 88,000 miles. It could have short-circuited the gyre … we'll never quite know," he said.
Courtesy Curt Ebbesmeyer
This plastic card may have traveled 88,000 mile, according to oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer.
"Everything in the ocean, particularly plastic, can travel great, great distances," he added.
Ebbesmeyer said the drift card was in "amazingly good condition."
"After 33 years in the ocean, [it] is in quite readable condition," he said. "Plastic doesn't degrade very fast."
Much of the plastic that finds its way into the sea will travel the world for years to come.
"Half of all plastic cannot sink because of its specific gravity. It's as if it was in prison in Flatland [a fictional two-dimensional world]," Ebbesmeyer said.
Study: Plastic in 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' increases 100-fold
While Anderson's drift card did not make landing very far from where it was released, others have ended up in Europe.
"Across the North Pole, down past Greenland, down to almost New York City, over to the vicinity of London, then turn south to France. That's probably the longest certifiable drift," Ebbesmeyer said.
Even if the Sitka drift card traveled 88,000 miles that may not be the longest ever journey by a piece of plastic in the sea.
Dec. 29: NBC's Kerry Sanders reports on a huge mass of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean that is killing marine life and growing larger each day.
An albatross found on Midway Island in the Pacific in 2004 was found to have 512 pieces of plastic in its stomach.
One piece was discovered to have come from a downed aircraft from World War II. It was likely caught in the 12,000-mile turtle gyre, which takes about six years to make its full circle.
Ebbesmeyer said that if that piece of plastic made 10 orbits in 60 years, that would mean it traveled 120,000 miles, equivalent to about five times round the Earth.
Plastic ducks, frogs
He also tracks some 28,800 plastic bath toys called Floatees – turtles, ducks, beavers and frogs – that were lost overboard from a container ship in the mid-Pacific in 1992.
Hundreds drifted some 2,200 miles and beached -- like Emmett Anderson's drift card -- near Sitka, Alaska.
To date, a duck was seen in Maine in July 2003, while a green plastic frog was spotted in Scotland in August 2003.
Ebbesmeyer, who usually gets one or two reports a year about the floating toys, said some of them may be approaching an epic achievement: Circumnavigating the globe.
"It's possible they have gone something like in the order of round the world," he said.
More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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- 88,000-mile voyage? Plastic card found after 33 years
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Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world
Leave a Comment:
What knowledge was gained regarding the original goal???
that plastic floats and if left to drift on its own, will drift somewhere.
That spilled oil can make its way around the globe if it is not contained or controlled. Does it have some kind of affect with sea wildlife? Who knows but this goes to show that perhaps, people should be more careful with non biodegradable stuff thrown in the ocean.
I am sure that the information on where and when these drift cards showed up helped reveal quite a bit about ocean currents. Remember in the 1970s when these were released we did not have the sophisticated satellite and sensor technology that we have today.
chefaz,
There was a wealth of knowledge gained: It takes 33 years for a plastic card dropped in the Bering Sea to travel to a beach in Sitka. That's science, man.
A great deal of knowledge was gained:
1) Plastic will never go away
2) We will be seeing fallout from Prince William Sound and the Gulf BP oil spill for generations (since this card was meant to simulate an oil spill from 33 years ago)
3) We will be the cause of our own destruction unless we start to clean up after ourselves
4) Something worth $1 about 33 years ago can sell for a bundle on Ebay!
Were the thousands of drift cards recyclable?
And it could have washed up on a beach 20 years ago, stuck behind a rock or buried in sand, and a storm surf comes and dislodges it and sets it adrift again. So the assumption that it floated the entire time and made all those miles is just an assumption. Assumptions aren't worth spit. In another article today MSNBC reported a 1942 Curtis P-40 JET PLANE discovered in Egypt. There is an awful lot of bad info, assumptions and plain wrong stuff appearing in so-called news articles. Scientists and reporters didn't used to engage so easily in speculation, guesswork and assumptions. Still 40 years unaccounted foor and now it sows up is cool. Unaccounted for does not mean they know where it was.
Not much was learned from this particular card. Oil would have long since degraded and sunk to the bottom of the Sea where it would have been covered by sediment - in essence it would go back to where we pulled it from. These cards were released to find where the currents would have taken an oil spill in the weeks and months following such an event. The only thing this tells us is that plastic released into the sea can last for 33 years and more. Even the 88,000 mile journey is bogus. For all they know this got wedged in a rock and has been there for 32.5 years. It's a silly story really.
I think recent spills have already shown drift patterns. But, it's like they knew there would be spills, maybe to inflate prices artificially, and send countries to war, in order to inflate prices even more.
Oh no, Dick Cheney worked for NOAA.
Guess plastic was a lot more durable back then. Now it just disintegrates into thousands of tiny pieces we could never hope to recover.
I hope no one else wants to use this world when we are done with it. It won't be worth much. You would think that treating the planet right would be something that we could all agree on. Well, I guess we can just hope that we destroy ourselves before we have the chance to do this to another planet.
mmm...sorry...the original post was rhetorical with my thoughts leaning towards what Steve, IReadyou and steve the admin posted (all three voted up) although there's some interesting answers in the other posts. my apologies for any confusion on the first post - i was about to hit the hay - and again my apologies if any misunderstanding on this one - i just got up.
oops - forgot to mention little Emmitt is adorable and glad this turned into an exciting moment of fame for him. not many kids can say that.
Im guessing they didnt get too much info from this test, seeing that most got thrown in the garbage due to nobody wasting their time for a dollar. even when that dollar back then was worth a little more.
all crap ends up in alaska
Maybe not all, but that's where Sarah Palin ended up, so you have a pretty convincing argument.
Millions of gallons of crude oil seep up from the sea floor naturally every year. It's a natural function of this planet. Crude oil is not all from fossils, most of it is a natural function of the planet like iron or rock. The facts are there if you are willing to look them up instead of just bashing Sarah Palin, a person that you don't know anything about, John Bayner.
"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where – where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border." -- Sarah Palin
A few years back there was a woman that would swim from Russia to Alaska. When the winters are especially cold one can actually walk the distance. I'm not sure that it's been cold enough to do that for some years. Russia and Alaska are very close to one another and as you leave the border as you say, you would naturally enter the other country. Have you ever looked at the map?
Yo Dan: BP is running ads that 2011 was the best year ever in terms of business on the gulf coast. So come on down !! I remember hearing during 2011 (one year after the major oil spill) what a disaster it still was. How do you reconcile these disparate claims.
The real question is did he get his dollar!
Thank you !
Was wondering the same thing. With the cost of living increases, he should get more!
He should sell the card on ebay he would probably get more than a Dollar.
just his quote " I just like to find stuff. When I don't find stuff, I'm not very happy" should get a buck from everyone here. i'm proud of you young man, keep searching the beaches for treasure and trash. more people like you would make this a great place
If the reward was $1.00 in 1980, he should get $2.94 today. Thank our government, who wants to borrow a dollar today and pay back $.97 in a year. You could buy a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes for a quarter in 1964. You can still buy a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes for a 1964 quarter.
Yes, they just set it adrift last night. He should get it just in time for his kids graduation.
My thots exactly
Finding something like that would be worth more than a dollar to me. I think I'd keep it.
I once found a young lady while walking the beach one early morning. I was smitten by her beauty and we made love over and over again that day. The next day I found her head a little further down the beach.............
dont thot there too hard solar power, im just teasin ya.
Lesson learned is plastic floats. How much did the American Taxpayer spend to find out that incredible discovery?
Notice the report is full of "May have" and "Possibly".
Yeah, I want to spend more money on gathering scientific results like that.
Luckily, scientists have the capacity to think a little deeper than you do. If you read the article, the research was intended to find how oil would circulate in the ocean if there was ever a spill, thus giving us an idea of how to go about a cleanup operation in the event of an environmental catastrophe.
Considering the reward for recovering the card was $1.00, I doubt they wasted too much of your precious tax money. We all pay for stuff we don't care about. Cry me a river.
okee is just an okee i guess
This would have given more useful info if there was a RF tracker embeded in the card, which allowed them to track it's location usinng GPS.... And yet GPS at the very least wasn't, at least commercially available in 1970... An end destinationn, does sort of leave the route taken in question; without the ability to track. It would be along the lines of what's used to radio tag animals (to keep track of them in the wild), except embeded in the thing, rather then placed in an animal to be released...
In actual real money value, the $1 of 1970 would be worth a fair bit more today. Even from the 1980s to present, spending power (aka adjusted for inflation real money vallue, vs nominal dollar amounts), would have added up a fair bit. For instance the movie ticket that cost $4.50 back in the 1980s (let along the 70s), is around $11 today, and that is but one example....
Considering the limited info that could be acquired by seeing where the thing floated too (naturally people wouldn't want to wait 30 years before cleaning up a spill, they'd want to get it before it rus it's course), there might be grounds to ask a few questions. Especially considering we've heard reports about studying the flow rate of ketchup and snniffing tea as projects payed on the public dime. And yet the $500 hammer and the $940 toilet seat has to best all of this.... If today's technology was used, things could probably be done more efficiently. Hell, if we could track a spill by satilite imaging, many issues would have grown mote; not that 30 years ago we would have predicted where technology has ended up today...
Presumably many of the other cards were recovered quickly enough to provide useful data. This one is just a leftover.
"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee."
Our government is noted for waste-like spending $250 thousand to study the flight of the bumble bee and that study proved the bumble bee could not fly. Or how about $10 million to develop a pen that could write in space when they could have simply used a pencil. Or $10 thousand for a toilet seat on the C-5 cargo plane. Shall I go on.
Why can't they send out a ship with nets to collect some of this trash?
Merle Haggard has a reputation for being a wise man, but he sure whiffed on that one.
Got to love plastic it will be here long after we are all gone.
I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. PLASTIC --- The Graduate
i remember that movie well. 1973?
1967. Time flies. I just wish that they made such classics today without the need for CGI.
Yep, but Anne Bacroft (Mrs. Robinson) is dead, and sadly, there won't be another one.
At least there was never an authorized sequel to The Graduate. Lots of ripoffs, sure, but no true sequel, unlike today where if a movie makes much money at all they have to start shooting "II" almost immediately, regardless of whether they have any real ideas for it or not.
so I wonder how many of these plastic pieces of TRASH are still floating in the middle of the Pacific gyre.... a mess of plastic roughly the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Oceans current rotation... these same scientists who keep telling us what a tragedy it is seem to be contributing to it eh??!
exactly, and what a study, it could have traveled around once or 88 times they said, so what did they learn. The ocean has currents basically which we knew. Science unless it seeks microscopic organisms to stop stop diseases or learn about virus(its greatest most practical contributions) is merely making new discoveries of what has already been here. Science is building a better tomato.
Well, you could try to research how many have been found, if you really wanted to know. Are you saying they made a poor decision, based on the science (and common sense) at the time? As the article states, "The drift card was one of thousands put into the Bering Sea by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as part of a project to find out where oil would go if there was a spill." Thousands of these cards is a minuscule amount compared to the garbage out there, even in the 70s. If you have proof that this was a terrible choice at the time, I'm interested.
perhaps more of the cards made it down to the 'great pacific garbage patch' and just took up residence there.
What Kryss said, as well as the fact that these cards are too large to be eaten by any wildlife.
Drop it, leave it alone, or send it back. It is probably made of a plastic material that is now a known carcinogen.
If it is, would sending it back be a bio-hazard and the kid set up for the government to be put on a list as a possible terrorist threat?
Maybe it was stuck to a whale's backside!
Maybe a whale died because it ate it.....:>o
Why settle for a buck? It may fetch $100 on e-bay.
just proves that plastic does not pollute. It can be recovered and recycled... eventually. It also proves that Global Warming is a hoax. It would have melted by now...
agree, much pollution is just the thought of it being an eye sore, not an issue of whether the great planet can handle a little case of fleas, man made crap aint like Gods creations , and Gods design and re creation cannot even compare to a little plastic junk. Just put it in the right place , recycle it, bury it, keep it out of sight and out of the oceans, as long as it is not leaking some chemical fluid it is fine. the major problem is the manufacturing of things that uses up fuel and energy , creating the bottles is consumption and man cannot exist and make progress and commerce without consumption of some kind. is it a perfect system no way but to go back to total tribal indigenous living like remote tribes that still exist is not a conceivable or logical choice. Obviously of an Armageddon scenario arises that will be the direction of survival mans roots may go back to, but it is sin that caused death and mankind needs to recognize the great redemption and the new creations of our Creator that will only come through Christ. If there is no God conservation is useless, if there is no Creator and earth and nature is to be worshiped than earth totally wins over and will easily wipe us off and a little trash in the scheme of time as a rash or mosquito bite.
It probably would cost the kid almost a dollar to mail it back.
Not sure what is amazing here. The plastic card was found very, very close to where it was "released". There is no evidence to suggest it travelled any great distance at all, other than an elapsed period of time.
7
Everyone is missing the point here: This conclusively proves Global Warming.
Plastic Flatulence! from the Plastonion Period!
I see that you chuckleheads have missed the entire point of the article... Gotta turn it political or tree hugging? Give it a rest.. it is about a 33 year old experiment and the feel good ending. Didn't your momma teach you that if you can't say anything relevant about the story, then don't say anything?
Personally, I think it is cool to think about where it has been.. from an 8 years old imaginary standpoint...
Be quiet ya turd in the puch bowl.
Does the kid get interest on the buck promised in 1979?
Hey that's my plastic card kid, and I want it back.
I can't say why, but I enjoyed this story. I might have actually learned something from it, maybe even positive stuff. I am smiling.
I remember in the 80's a big fat hard-core republican navy mechanic telling me, "You can put anything you want into the ocean, it'll just disappear and swallow it up and you'll never see it again." He's dead now, but the plastic's still around.
lmao...was he a fat old chief sitting around regaling real sailors with his exploits in the PI?
But you were supposed to put a hole in the trash bag. Pump and Dump!
Will he get the $1.00 reward . . . with interest?
Yea idk somehow I'm not impressed by some float-some. I get the hole rare that it happened and stuff butt with all the garbage out there I could send out a weighted down bottle with a message that says, hey, @!$%# you, and it may not be read for several times that. Would I be remembered?
It was set adrift in the Bering Sea and ended up in Alaska! What a find! I say by the condition of the card, it took about 2 weeks.
That is so cool! My dad worked on that project and I have card number 1 from this project. It's cool to see that his work is still going on.
My dad worked on this project too. I really enjoyed seeing this. Blast from the past. One thing I remember distinctly is Bo Derek finding one of the cards and the letter she wrote. I wish I had one of the cards.
I'd rather have had Bo Derek!
oh the irony. Just yesterday I read an article that was complaining about all the plastic that's floating around in the ocean, causing all kinds of problems. Now comes a feel-good story about plastic that was deliberately put in the ocean 33 years ago. Funny.
Traveled 88,000 miles? Thats quit a long stab at a hypothesis.
"Piece of plastic stuck in pack ice drifts to shore".
Big whooooopie!