Curtis Ebbesmeyer

Charles Curtis Ebbesmeyer ( born April 24, 1943 in Los Angeles, California, USA) is an American oceanographer retired. He explored the ocean currents based on the movement of flotsam in the oceans.

The general public he is best known for his research on the 1992 lost 29,000 toy plastic ducks in the Pacific. Some of these ducks have reached Europe.

Life

He studied at the University of Washington; where he earned a doctorate in oceanography in 1973. Ebbesmeyer observed ocean currents by means of drifting buoys and floating debris. In May of 1990, the cargo ship Hansa Carrier lost 80,000 Nike sneakers from a Container. In it he saw a good way to monitor ocean currents and pursued their way to the coasts of Oregon and Washington.

Ebbesmeyer founded a network of people who report being washed up flotsam and other debris on the coasts. Among other things, he also uses its 34,000 hockey gloves that were lost in 1994 by the Hyundai Seattle. For processing these data he uses the program OSCURS (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation ), a computer simulation program, which was developed by oceanographer Jim Ingraham. These observations helped him in better prediction of the path of oil spills that float in seawater.

Ebbesmeyer founded in 1996, the charitable foundation Beachcombers 'and Oceanographers ' International Association. He wrote and published in the journal Beachcombers ' Alert.

Although he is already retired, Ebbesmeyer continues to work on his research. In 1999 he published together with the oceanographer Charles Moore the results of a study. This study suggests that in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, the ratio of plastic to plankton is at a ratio of six to one. That is, to one kilogram of plankton are six kilograms of plastic waste in the sea water. He also tried to calculate the resulting damage at the beginning of the food chain in the ocean of life.

Bibliography

• Okubo, Akira, Ebbesmeyer, Curtis C., Helseth, Jonathan M. 1976. Determination of Lagrangian deformation from analysis of current followers. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 6, 524-527.
• McWilliams, JC, Brown, ED, Bryden, HL, Ebbesmeyer, CC, Elliot, BA, Hein Miller, RH, Lien Hua, B., Leaman, KD, Lindstrom, EJ, Luyten, JR, McDowell, SE, Owens, W. Brechner, Perkins, H., Price, JF, Regier, L, riser, SC, Rossby, HT, Sanford, TB, Shen, CY, Taft, BA, Van Leer, JC, 1983. The local dynamics of eddies in the Western North Atlantic. pp. 92-113 in Eddies in Marine Science. Allan R. Robinson, editor. Springer -Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg.
• Okubo, Akira, Ebbesmeyer, CC, Sanderson, BG, 1983. Lagrangian diffusion equation and its application to oceanic dispersion. Journal of the oceanographical Society of Japan, 39, 259-266.
• Riser, SC, Owens, WB, Rossby, HT, Ebbesmeyer, CC, 1986. The structure, dynamics, and origin of a small-scale lens of water in the western North Atlantic thermocline. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 16 ( 3), 572-590.
• Ebbesmyer, CC, RJ Stewart, and S. Albertson. 1998th Circulation in Southern Puget Sound's finger Inlets: Hammersley, Totten, Budd, Eld, and Case Inlets. Proceedings of Puget Sound Research 1998 Conference, March 12-13, 1998, p. 239-258. Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team, Olympia, WA.
• Ebbesmeyer, CC, CA Coomes, GA Cannon, and DE Bretschneider. In 1989. Linkage of ocean and fjord dynamics at decadal period. In: DH Peterson [ed ​​] Climate Variability on the eastern Pacific and western North America, Geophys. Monogr. 55, Am. Geophys. Union, PP. 399-417.
• Ebbesmeyer, CC, DR Cayan, DR Milan, FH Nichols, DH Peterson and KT Redmond.. 1991 1976 step in the Pacific climate: forty environmental changes in between 1968-1975 and 1977-1984. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Climate ( PACLIM ) Workshop, April 1990 (California Department of Water Resources, 1991).
• Ebbesmeyer, C., and R. Strickland. 1995 Oyster condition and climate. Evidence from Willapa Bay. NOAA Sea Grant Program Grant, grant # NA36RG0071. 11pp.