Posted by David McRee at BlogTheBeach.com
Interview transcript:
Introduction: Hey, Beachhunter here. I’m in Cocoa Beach this weekend
attending the 14th Annual International Seabean Symposium
and Beachcombers’ Festival which is held at the Cocoa Beach
Public Library every October. Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, author of
his new book “Flotsametrics and the Floating World,” is also
in attendance and I was fortunate enough to be able to sit
down with him and have an interview talking about his new book.
And Here’s what he had to say:
David: Dr. Ebbesmeyer, how did the idea for this book come
about?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: That’s a good question. It’s just an
outgrowth of who I am. The book’s about a little boy who
grows up to see the world in a different way. People always
told me “you see the world differently,” but it wasn’t until
I got older that I said “I think they’re right.” And I just kept
working at oceanography and I worked at it in my own way, and
then when the big container spill of Nike shoes came along my
mom said “that’s what you should be doing,” and I said “oh”…
and I said I’ll look into it and before I knew it I was studying
the world of flotsam which turned out to be a virtually
undiscovered world on our planet–what actually floats on the
surface of the ocean has been undiscovered. So I entered that
world and after twenty years…well, my agent Elizabeth Wales
came along…and I was on a radio program…and she stopped by
the freeway and said “Oh, he should write a book,” and she
called me. And so basically because of that radio program and
just kind of what I do–go around and talk about flotsam–the
book evolved. So it’s just an evolution of a life.
David: So, What exactly is “Flotsametrics.”
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: Flotsametrics is a term that Jim Ingraham and I
coined twenty years ago. It’s the metrics of everything that
floats. It’s trying to understand what floats on the surface,
which has not really been done before. My view is that
everything that floats on the ocean has a story to tell. It
just happens to be deaf and mute, so you have to strangle it’s
little neck to get its story out.
David: Before I read the book [Flotsametrics] I’d never really heard about
slabs and snarks. What are those and what sort of a role do
they play in your understanding of the ocean.
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: Well, you start with the big picture. If you look
at the world from like 35,000 feet up it looks like a smooth, nice
ocean. And when you start getting down to the sea surface [holds
up his book and points to the cover illustration] where this
little duck is–this is the real sea surface–and you start
actually swimming in it, you find that the ocean is not smooth.
It’s actually made up of lots of chunks, and the chunks are like
thirty miles across and maybe 200 feet deep. When you’re standing
on the shore [in the shallow water] you often feel different
temperatures go by–if you’re standing in a lake or on the shore
you’ll see that…you’ll feel different temperatures [of water] go
by. Those are snarks–chunks of water drifting by you. The whole
world is actually a pointillist drawing, like a Seurat painting. When
you get up close you see all the little dots. When you get up close
to the ocean you see that the ocean is made of millions and millions
of little pieces of water that are typically 10, 20, or 100 miles
across and maybe 500 feet thick so they are really long and thin
[holds up his book to demonstrate], about a page thick. But that’s
the way the ocean is. And I call them snarks because I first started
hunting them in 1967. They’re very elusive and I wanted to follow
one. My old advisor, Cliff Barnes, said “that’s going to be tough.”
So I had to schedule a boat and I actually went out and surprised
him. I followed one for a weekend. And so I named them after
Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.”
David: You also write a lot about “gyres.” What exactly is a gyre?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: A gyre is a circle of current. In this book a gyre
is a circle of current that runs between continents. It’s like a
snake holding its tail, and the currents go all the way around from
one continent, across the ocean, and back. And those are typically
five or ten thousand miles in circuit. And it might take two to twenty
years to go around once. The time it takes to go around that
circuit, that gyre, is the orbital period. And that was
undiscovered on this planet. I just tried for the first time to put
them all together and say “here are the orbital periods that are
fundamental to our planet.”
David: You publish a newsletter, Beachcombers’ Alert. How did that
get started and what role does that play in your understanding
of the ocean?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: The Beachcombers’ Alert is a newsletter…it
comes out quarterly, and it’s basically stories that are sent to
me by beachcombers. It started as a result of the Nike shoe spill
in 1990–80,000 Nike’s were spilled overboard from a container
ship in five containers. And then in 1992 we had 29,000 turtles,
ducks, beavers, and frogs [plastic bathtub toys] spilled overboard
in roughly the same area. In 1994 we had 34,000 hockey gloves
spilled overboard. And my dad, who had Parkinson’s at the time,
and mom, lived just a few blocks north and I had
lunch with them several times a week and after a while so many
stories were developing and my dad said “you know, you guys need
a newsletter.” This was 1996, and I said, “yeah, that’s pretty good…”
Jim White, my dad’s therapist, said “well, I can lay it out in
Pagemaker.” Mom had made sandwiches for us and said “well if
you’ll lay it out, I’ll do the mailing list,” and before I knew
it I was in a corner. I said “alright, I’ll do the newsletter.”
That was 1996. Dad died in July of ’96 and he never got to see the
first newsletter. It’s been going ever since and I think we’re in
our 55th issue. Basically people from all over the world find
something and report in, and I put it into a newsletter and mail
it out by snail mail. Here we are, 1996 to 2009, we’re in our 14th
year.
David: What would you say is your greatest concern about the
oceans today?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: I’d have to say that we are infecting the ocean
with plastic. Plastic is not biodegradable. I was just on a boardwalk
and it [a sign] says “…the biodegradation of plastic…” well,
plastic doesn’t biodegrade, it partitions–fractures–into ever
smaller pieces, down to molecules, but there is nothing on the
planet that really can digest those molecules and some plastic
floats and some sinks. So the whole body of the ocean is infected
with microscopic plastic which gets into the food chain, is in all
of the food that comes out of the ocean. So I’m afraid that the
ocean has been infected.
David: Do you have any words of wisdom or words of encouragement
for students who might be considering oceanography as as a
field of study?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: I would say that the surface of the ocean as well
as many other aspects are virtually unexplored. We know the ocean,
more poorly I think than the surface of the moon. I would say go
after something you love to do and follow it. But it better be
something you love to do, it can’t just be a job, or else it will
wind up killing you. But if you love to do it then you’ll find a
life’s passion.
David: With respect to flotsametrics, how can ordinary people–
beachcombers, people that love the ocean–how can they
contribute to our knowledge of the oceans?
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: Carry a camera, carry a notebook, and whenever
you’re walking along the beach, if you see something unusual–
something that catches your eye–take a picture of it, take a
note, and then let me know and I’ll report it out in the
Beachcombers’ Alert [newsletter]. Follow it up. Simple things. We
were walking along the beach yesterday and we saw this buoy–its
been in the newspaper–but it’s just a piece of flotsam that has
a big chain on it. It’s like a twenty or thirty foot long tank.
It’s just anchored out there because the chain is dragging the
bottom. Well, go out there and look at it, take the numbers down
and figure out where it came from. That’s really important. We
know virtually nothing about where the junk on our beach
comes from. It’s very simple. It’s just basically gumshoe
detective work.
David: Well, thanks for talking to us today Dr. Ebbesmeyer. I’ve
learned a lot and I enjoyed your book.
Dr. Ebbesmeyer: Thanks David. It’s been a real pleasure.
Note: Eric Scigliano, an editor at Seattle Metropolitan magazine, is co-author of Flotsametrics.
Flotsametrics and the Floating World is available on Amazon.com.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for this interview, David. I gobbled up the book, too. Fascinating stuff. Out here, on the island of Guam in western Micronesia, we get all kinds of funky flotsam. Early in the year, when the trades kick in, glass floats (and the Portuguese man-o-war ‘jellyfish’) start collecting in coves and rivermouths along the reefs of our eastern coast. We also find sea beans and bits of pumice, some of them heavy with barnacles, bryozoans and an occasional little coral colony (usually the hardy Pocillopora). Curtis and Eric’s book has now got me looking at all the other stuff on the beach, too: flip-flops, plastic this-and-that and styrofoam bric-a-brac. Im embarrassed that after a lifetime of beachcombing around the world, I’d not paid more attention to this interesting stuff. Thanks, Curtis; youve a standing invitation to visit our lab (www.guammarinelab.com) and tiderows of shell, wood and plastic. Micronesia, with its widely scattered small islands straddling the north equatorial current and counter current, must provide a servicable sampling design for investigating flotsam in this vast stretch of sea.