Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion

This book describes the work of a man who tracks trash as it travels great distances by way of ocean currents.

Review of Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion
Age range: 10 and up
Scientists in the Field Series

I think that the sciences that interests you as a kid find a way of interesting you as an adult, even if you have given up dreams of marine biology fame and Sea Quest like relationships with dolphins who can talk. I wanted to be a Marine Biologist. I lived near the ocean when I was little, I loved everything to do with dolphins and I was one of those kids that thought she could save the world. Thanks goodness other people didn’t give up on that last one. If you think about it, everyday there are scientists out there saving the world one piece of flotsam at a time and our kids should know about them.

Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion is about scientists who are trying to save the ocean one picked up bath toy at a time. Marine trash is not only prevalent, it is also devastating to delicate marine habitats and is making beach walking into a job of picking up the trash the tide brings in and people leave behind. Last summer, I was walking along Crystal Beach in Texas and was amazed when I started finding large objects floating in and making their way up into the dunes. Two women and an older-gentlemen saw me picking up a rather large yellow container and stopped me. They had trash bags big enough to swallow my five feet with room left over for the yellow container and a mound of flip flops one of the women was carting around in a laundry basket. She took the flip-flops home and nailed them up on the posts that held her house off the ground by a good fifteen feet. I politely handed over my yellow container and the man sighed. He told me that a lot of the trash they picked up, my yellow container for instance, was from the big ocean liners that made port in Galveston Bay across from us at Crystal Beach or from the fisherman vessels right off the coast. The three beach combers I met had been picking up trash, they said, since Hurricane Ivan. The beach was destroyed and almost every house along Crystal Beach had been swept away. For a year they got up, cleaned up, and carried bag after bag of trash to the local dump and even had to get big trucks that dragged entire walls from the destroyed houses out of the ocean. The daily trash picking up became a habit. Now, long after the devastation of Hurricane Ivan, they are still getting up and cleaning up the beach at least three to five days a week.

So when I saw Loree Griffin Burns book, Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion, I was interested to see what my beachcomber friends were up against. Burns does a good job of getting right down to the nitty gritty (there is a lot of trash out there and not all of it is showing up on beaches, it’s still floating around out there) and an introduction to the scientists who are tracking marine trash. First, there is Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and the leading expert in flotsam and jetsam. He has been tracking trash since the early nineties. With help from the NOAA scientists, in particular oceanographer James Ingraham who perfected the OSCUR computer program to calculate surface current motion in the North Pacific Ocean, he has been able to run experiments on determining where trash, flotsam and jetsam, in the ocean will end up. There are two major results of the information they have collected while tracking trash: one, surface current variability due to weather, season and year which has helped marine biologists and other scientists understand marine migration and other marine events; and two, they are able to keep beachcombers around the world up to date on what spills are coming their way.

The book goes on to explain current events, the Garbage Patch, Monster Debris and the collection of ghost nets. Organizationally, the book goes from the little stuff (bath toys and sneakers) to the big trash in the ocean that can only be picked up by specialized boats with cranes. Burns does a good job of getting just enough scientific information in there that you are able to understand the next scientific discussion or explanation in the book, like building block after block until you have a wall of science you can understand and use. I think this sort of internal organization within the paragraphs that builds the readers knowledge slowly is one of the most effective ways of organizing a scientifically focused book. The formatting of this book was also very engaging and usually takes part in the knowledge building side of the narrative. There is a two-page spread explaining longitude and latitude; another about waves, tides, currents and gyres; and one more about what you can do (stop the plastic before it gets in the ocean). These are great breaks from the narrative. These breaks can be used to focus discussion in a class, to explain a key element, or to use as a what you can do class project guide. Unfortunately, the book has a good, but not great appendix. There is a short Glossary, Books to Enjoy, Web Sites to Explore (one of the addresses turned out not to work- the beachcombers website), Acknowledgements, Photo Credits, Bibliographic Notes, and an Index. There were only three books in the further reading, or as it was called the Books To Enjoy. Most of the websites were good but I thought it was a shame she did not have the NOAA Marine Debris Program website (www.marinedebris.noaa.gov) although she talks about the NOAA in the book. The Marine Debris Program website also has resources for teachers and fun activities for kids connected to the tracking and collection of marine trash which would be very helpful in the classroom when teaching this subject. There are also plenty of good videos to choose from to add a little multimedia to the mix.

I highly recommend this book for elementary and middle schoolteachers of science or those who want cross-curricular material. All of the Scientist in the Field books that I have seen impressed me and this is a good addition to the series.

Further, if you are a high school or higher educator than I would also like to suggest 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 by Donovan Hohn. It is a great, fun read about tracking the same bath toys that they talk about in Tracking Trash but geared toward an older audience in the style of a Bill Bryson book on science- fun and educational. ( )

I thought this was going to be mostly about trash, but it's really about ocean currents and how they affect us. Yes, there is talk of what happens to our trash, and I think the Eastern Garbage Patch is the most disgusting thing I've heard of. ( )

This is a story about Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer who tracks trash as science. I thought when reading this book that it was very interesting that their is a science about trash. The things that Dr. Curtis finds helps him track down different ways that we could help save the beaches are the streets and oceans. He makes scientific data out of what he finds to help him understand the ocean. This book was pretty lengthy but had a lot of great facts that one should no about what Dr. Curtis does and what it encounters everyday. ( )

Tracking Trash is about Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer who tracks trash for science. He is aided by beachcombers and oceanographers in his studies. The information that Curtis collects from the traash sometimes make news and gives him important scientific data that helps him to protect and better understand our oceanic enviroments and the creates who live in them. Throughout the book we travel to the Pacific Ocean, and different islands and seashores tracking trash. This book is extremely informational and educational. It gives us a lot of great facts. I found it to be an interesting read because I like to hunt the beach for hidden objects. Sometimes, well most of the time, the objects that I uncover are trash. I never thought that this trash could tell us so about the oceans and habitats that lie way down deep underwater. I never thought about where this trash came from. I just thought it was left by other beach goers, but some of it may have drifted from far away and washed up to my feet. I love the real photographs of the people, the factual pieces of information, direct data from news paper articles, etc, and the maps provided in this book. That information alone tells the reader that this is a non-fiction book. The words were very lengthy and some of the book was really boring, but other than that, it was an interesting read and I enjoyed most of it. ( )