On January 10, 1992, the sea was awash with yellow ducks, blue tortoises, green frogs and red beavers. A container filled with 29,000 bath toys had fallen off a ship during a violent storm in the North Pacific, almost exactly halfway between Asia and America. Seven months later, hundreds of the rubber toys were deposited on the coast of Sitka, Alaska, not far away from where some 61,000 Nike sneakers had washed up after a similar accident at sea two years earlier. It then occurred to American oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer that these drifting objects could be studied over a number of years to predict ocean currents.