Ducks Overboard

Ducks Overboard! - A True Story of Plastic in Our Oceans

Markus Motum

鸭子下水! — 说说大海里的塑料

Hello. You may have seen plastic ducks like me before, but I’ll bet none of them has had a story like mine. I’ve been on quite an adventure. This is the story of that incredibe journey — where I came from, how I got lost, the strange and amazing sights I saw, and how I ended up here.

Where is here? Well, first thing first. My story began in 1992 in a factory in China.

The factory molded plastic bath toys in the shape of ducks, frogs, turtles, and beavers. (Many toys are made from plastic because it is long-lasting and easy to clean. Plastic can be an extremely useful material and is used widely in medicine, technology, and food storage. More plastic has been produced since 2004 than during the whole of the twentieth century.) Thousands of us ducks were packed up in boxes. Our boxes were loaded into a container and carried away by a large truck.

Our container, along with hundreds of others, was loaded onto a ship destined for the United States, about 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers) across the Pacific Ocean. From there, we would land in all sorts of shops and bathtubs. At least that was the plan. Far out at sea, the ship was caught in a fierce storm. A giant wave swept our container overboard, and it began to sink.

In its fall from the ship, the container had been damaged. Through the cracks and holes, my friends and I escaped and bobbed to the surface. The ship continued its journey to the United States, leaving 28,000 plastic ducks stranded in the middle of the ocean.

We were buffeted by the waves, blown by the wind, and pulled by the ocean currents. We were soon separated and spread out in different directions. We were surrounded by the blue ocean and the life in it. (A current is a steady movement of water in a particular direction. Ocean currents are driven by tides, wind, water temperature and density.）

We saw fish of every size, shape, and color. We saw a giant jellyfish and many other creatures. And we spotted something completely out of place in the ocean — a plastic bag. (Plastic bags are “single-use” plastic, which means they are used for a very short time before being thrown away.)

Before we knew it, a passing whale gobbled it up. The giant creature had mistaken the bag for food. It swam off, still hungry, to catch up with its pod. (If eaten, plastic bags can clog and bind the digestived systems of sea creatures.)

We carried on with our journey.

The days passed and I found myself alone, pulled by a current away from the last of my fellow travelers. One day I spotted a sea turtle struggling in the water. (Sea creatures can and do get tangled in fishing nets. The nets can make it more difficult for the animals to swim, hunt for food, or even breathe.)

The Ocean currents carried me and my friends far and wide.Some journeys lasted years. (Some ducks made their way to Japan.On average, twenty-seven times more plastic winds up in the waters around Japan than anywhere else on the globe. Some ducks reached Australia. Coral reefs around the Australian coast can be poisoned when plastic gets caught in them. Some ducks reached Hawaii. The location of these islands in the Pacific Ocean currents means that a lot of plastic washed up there. Some ducks got stuck in Arctic ice. When the ice melted, those ducks floated south to Scotland and to the east coast of the United States. )

I wasn’t so lucky. The currents took me straight into a giant garbage patch! For miles all I could see was trash: toothbrushes, bottles, cups, shoes, and more. I was caught in a swirling, floating mass of trash. Was this where I belonged? (The great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vast area with a high concentration of marine trash.It is created by swirling currents that carry debris to the area and trap it. It is estimated to be more than double the size of Texas.)

I thought I’d be stuck there forever, part of an island of unwanted, discarded, and forgotten things. Then one day, clouds darkened the sky. The wind kicked up. The water grew wild. A mighty storm freed me from the garbage patch. Across weeks, months, and years, the ocean tossed me.

I floated for thousands of miles, until one day I finally reached land. Though I had never seen or been to this place before, it felt familiar, Why? The beach was covered in trash, the same kind of trash I’d seen in oceans all over the world. Plastic, it seemed, was everywhere.

As least here, the trash was not being ignored. Up and down the beach, it was being  collected, then sorted. Some of it would be recycled, while some would be cleaned, fixed, or restored to be made useful again. I was scooped up and put in a bag.

Where would I end up? I wondered. And it was here, in a bathtub with my little human friend.