UCSB Reads 2012 chose 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 as their pick of the year. I had never participated in a group reading event. There were large inflatable ducks around campus to advertise this event and free copies of the book were handed out.
Environmental tales are not my usual genre but I felt some peer pressure to read it. It took a while for me to engage with the story but all was good by page 100.
Hohn reads about plastic bath floatees (not rubber ducks) that were accidentally sent overboard while in transit from China to America. This story so piqued Hohn’s imagination, he embarked on a 5-part “chase” for information about them. He travels to Alaska to see where some of the floatees have been found and travels to China to see where they were made. He goes to Hawaii to learn about dredging water and travels a similar route on a freight ship so see how turbulent the ocean can get. His final chase was to see if the floatees could have realistically made it through the Bering Straight to make it to the Atlantic Ocean where there were rumors that there had been a floatee sighting.
Along the way, Hohn learns about and explores numerous topics some which include the politics of environmentalism, the science of waves, Chinese business practices, plastic impacts on birds, and mesoscale eddies (the oceanic analogues of weather systems in the atmosphere). Hohn met a variety of personalities in his travels and offers a snapshot biography of everyone. Some characters are stereotypes (sea captains) and others are unexpected (a blind oceanographer).
Hohn repeatedly quotes Moby Dick and compares his quest with Ahab. Hohn searched for his yellow duck floatee and there was no satisfactory resolution in the search.
