Tub toys orbit the Pacific subarctic gyre

In 1992, a cargo container of children's bath toys fell overboard in the middle North Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, 29,000 toys were tracked 4,000 kilometers to southeastern Alaska [Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham, 1994]. The spill's upcoming fifteenth anniversary has prompted an examination of the reports of toys stranded on shorelines around the Subarctic Gyre, a planetary vortex the size of the United States. Previous articles have reported the drift of sneakers and toys for a year or so only along the southern edge of the Pacific Subarctic Gyre [Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham, 1992, 1994]. However, continuing reports of stranded toys have stimulated curiosity about how long it would take the currents that link the Gyre's perimeter between Asia and America to transfer flotsam around the Gyre, that is, its orbital period. These currents (Figure 1) are the North Pacific Drift Current, Alaska Current/ Alaska Coastal Current, Alaskan Stream, Bering Slope Current and East Kamchatka Current, Oyashio Current, and Kuroshio. In the Bering Sea, the North Aleutian Current recurves north from Attu Island eastward along the north side of the Aleutians to merge with the Bering Slope Current.