Curtis Ebbesmeyer

He gained public attention by his reporting of studies of the movement and distribution of a consignment of rubber bath toys, which were washed from a ship into the Pacific Ocean in 1992, and continued to be collected from Northwest beaches for more than twelve years.

Educated at the University of Washington––where he earned a Ph.D. in oceanography in 1973––Ebbesmeyer monitored ocean currents by tracking buoys and markers dropped at sea.

However, in a 1999 article[full citation needed], Ebbesmeyer credits inspiration for his work to the discovery by Richard Strickland, a colleague at the University of Washington School of Oceanography, of a message in a bottle calling for the release of the Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng.

It offers consulting in physical oceanography services, meteorological conditions studies, and application of marine and freshwater instrumentation.

Ebbesmeyer has worked with marine scientist Charles Moore, who, in 1999, published findings that the ratio of plastic to zooplankton (in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre) is about six to one.