''Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them'' is a book by

Donovan Hohn Donovan Hohn (born May 29, 1972 San Francisco) is an American author, essayist, and editor. Life Donovan Hohn is the author of '' Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, ...

concerning 28,800 plastic ducks and other toys, known as the

Friendly Floatees Friendly Floatees are plastic bath toys (including rubber ducks) marketed by The First Years and made famous by the work of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who models ocean currents on the basis of flotsam movements. Ebbesmeyer studied the ...

, which were washed overboard from a

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal ...

in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

on 10 January 1992 and have subsequently been found on beaches around the world and used by

oceanographers Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynami ...

including

Curtis Ebbesmeyer Curtis Charles Ebbesmeyer (born April 24, 1943) is an American oceanographer based in Seattle, Washington. In retirement, he has studied the movement of flotsam to track ocean currents. He gained public attention by his reporting of studies of ...

to trace ocean currents. The book was published in the United States in March 2011 by Viking () and in the UK in February 2012 by Union Books () with a shorter subtitle: ''Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea''. It was noted by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as one of the ''100 Notable Books of 2011'', shortlisted for the 2012

Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism The Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism is an annual literary award for "a journalist whose work has brought public attention to important issues", awarded by the New York Public Library. It was established in 1987 in memory of ...

, runner-up of the 2012 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and runner-up of the 2013

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction is awarded by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) biennially "to a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating import ...

. The title is a reference to

Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...

's classic seafaring novel ''

Moby-Dick ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler, whaling ship ''Pequod (Moby- ...

''.

References

External links

''Scribe'' publisher's description
American non-fiction books 2011 non-fiction books Ocean currents Viking Press books {{environment-book-stub