Reading flotsam
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 1 Comment
A top oceanographer studies the signals of the floating world
In November, when a disembodied foot washed ashore near Richmond, B.C.—the seventh found in the area in a 16-month period (one was revealed to be a hoax)—the media knew whom to call for insight: Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an expert of all that floats on the sea. Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, has made a career of what he calls “the floating world”: the trash and treasure that ride the ocean’s currents, sometimes for thousands of kilometres, before eventually washing up on the beach. What most of us might consider junk—a piece of plywood, a metal canister, an old sneaker—is, to him, a font of information. The ocean, he explains, has 11 “gyres”: continuous loops made up of smaller currents, each as distinct as the scales on a snake’s back. He believes these gyres are among the earth’s greatest features, sweeping everything, from people to plastic to water itself, around the globe. And flotsam is a language of sorts. “It’s what the ocean is writing to us,” he says. “Those are her characters. I want to know what they mean.”
The world’s foremost beachcomber, Ebbesmeyer spent his childhood in California’s landlocked San Fernando Valley. “We were close enough to the water to pine for it,” he writes in a book co-written with environmental reporter Eric Scigliano, out March 24. Flotsametrics and the Floating World is part autobiography, part glimpse into the science of the sea; just like flotsam on the beach, facts and legends about Ebbesmeyer’s work are sprinkled throughout.
