Donovan Hohn

The full title of Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn is 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, which really rather nicely encapsulates what this nonfiction book is about. An accident happens at sea and a container ship accidentally dumps 28,800 plastic bath toys (7,200 red beavers, 7,200 green frogs, 7,200 blue turtles, and 7,200 yellow ducks) into the Pacific show more ocean.

Hohn writes: "We know where the spill occurred: 44.7 degrees North, 178.1 degrees East, south of the Aleutians, near the international date line, in the stormy latitudes renowned in the age of sail as the Graveyard of the Pacific, just north of what oceanographers, who are, on the whole, less poetic than mariners of the age of sail, call he subarctic front. We know the date - January 10, 1992 - but not the hour. (pg. 9)" After the spill beachcombers began to find the bath toys and a legend grew out of the initial news story that placed duck sightings from the spill even in the Atlantic.

Donovan Hohn goes in search of the bath toys trying to discover where they beached. This lead him to investigate plastics and what they are doing to the oceans and shorelines. His research also leads him to investigates ocean currents, gyres, shipping, Chinese toy manufacturing, and the arctic, among others. So, while Moby-Duck is ostensibly about the plastic bath toys lost at sea, they really become a rather small portion of his eventual investigation and travels.

While there is a wealth of information here, I did end up wishing that Hohn had concentrated on the bath toys lost at sea. What originally intrigued him enough to inspire the book also captured my imagination and made me want to read it. While I did enjoy it, it became a rather slow read full of more information than I was originally anticipating. It helps that he is a good writer and has a nice way with descriptions and imparting information. Hohn includes a selected bibliography and notes, which I always appreciate in nonfiction.
Highly recommended - but know it's about much, much more than the missing bath toys.
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In which a high school teacher is so spellbound by a student's paper describing a massive spill of thousands of bath toys that he quits his job to undertake a search for the toys. The book centers around a series of oceanographic expeditions that he hitches a ride on, with side trips to explore the factory in China where the toys were made and finagling an introduction into the curious hobby of beachcombing. The author is a very good writer who is witty and thoughtful at all the right times; show more however, this book ultimately succumbs to mediocrity because it is too long and, even more, because the author follows the broad and easy path which wrecks almost all nautical books: he slings seafarer jargon around with very little attempt to define or explain what the deuce he's trying to say in English. Between the yachtsman jargon and an agglomeration of chemistry terms which would send an undegraduate chemistry major to the dictionary, he erected vocabulary barriers that I really didn't feel like climbing. Even worse, after all this erudition, he then does find the time to stop and define lots of fairly common terms such as "anemometer". Huh? show less

Overall I enjoyed this book, though I think the title/cover does it a bit of a disservice. It makes it seem like a very scientific book with a lot of history about plastic ducks floating in the ocean, but really it’s more of a travel memoir with some popular science bits mixed in. The last two sections in particular were heavy on the personal anecdotes and less about plastic ducks– possibly because the author hadn’t seen any for years by that point.

That said, it DID make me more show more interested about oceanography and oceanographers. I enjoyed the mix of travel, science, and history. The author describes people vividly, without being rude about their quirks, and you can tell he likes people.

I’m uncertain if it was worth it for him to quit his job and pursue the plastic ducks (especially since he had a young child at the time!) but I suppose that’s just me being judgemental. (Although considering how many times he quotes Arctic explorers, I can’t help but wonder if wanting to explore himself mixed with fear of fatherhood led to suddenly wanting to go on a multi-year quest. Anyway.) show less

I remember hearing the stories about these ducks potentially washing up along the Maine coast, so when I got the chance to bring this book with me on a Maine vacation, I snatched it up, figuring it would make for good reading on a deck overlooking the water. It was. Hohn's book is an interesting and personal account of the author's quest to understand these ducks (and their floating comrades) but also to grasp the broader issues of transoceanic container shipping, the plague of plastic trash show more polluting the oceans, &c. Quite a bit of haring off on long tangents (probably could have stood to be a hundred pages or so shorter), but that didn't bother me too much at all in this case. show less