In 1992, some shipping containers got washed overboard on a trip from Hong Kong to Tacoma. Among the losses was one containing 28,800 plastic bath toys known as Friendly Floatees - frogs, turtles, ducks, that kind of thing. It's not an uncommon event, storms cause, on average, about one container per day to get lost at sea, a minor amount when we consider how much shipping is done annually. 

Most of them sink to the ocean floor but the floating critters container ruptured and in the years since then, ducks, frogs and turtles have gone to England and other parts of the Atlantic, and even been found frozen in the Arctic. Oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer has been tracking them and he believes by now that only a few hundred remain. The value in science is witnessing ocean currents at work.

Researcher Max Roser of the University of Oxford runs the Our World In Data project, which makes data visualizations of long-term trends. 

He does more than just map world proverty, violence and health, sometimes he has a little fun. Roser recently mapped the ducks' journey and made a nice visualization so we can see how long it takes to go from place to place when nature has the wheel. 


Credit: Max Roser

Sometimes the treasures can be fun in more delicious ways. In 2006, North Carolin beach-goers witnessed sealed bags of Doritos tortilla chips floating to shore, still dry and completely edible. If that was before they got rid of all the trans fats, that was probably really tasty!