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| Preface: A New World | |
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| Chasing Water | |
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| The shoe drops and a quest begins. | |
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| Growing up near the sea but not on it. | |
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| Chocolate and ducklings, Flotsam and Jetsam. | |
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| An educational detour. | |
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| Dance class and lifelong love. | |
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| Escaping the draft and working for Big Oil. | |
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| Hearing the oceanographic call. | |
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| A boost from John D. Rockefeller. | |
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| A mentor with a holistic approach to the sea. | |
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| An aquatic snark hunt. | |
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| Deadheads and Trident subs. | |
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| Eulerian and Lagrangian viewpoints. | |
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| Water bodies as granular and dynamic. | |
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| Dabob Bay as oceanic microcosm. | |
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| Oil and Icebergs | |
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| Jim Ingraham creates the Ocean Surface Current Simulator. | |
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| The UW gang fans out. | |
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| Mobil Oil's first oceanographer. | |
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| Conspiring to make Big Oil prepare for big waves. | |
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| Cliff Barnes's war with icebergs and U-boats. | |
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| Riders on the icy sea. | |
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| Life on ice islands. | |
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| North Sea perils. | |
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| Goodbye, Dallas; hello, Seattle. | |
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| Knocking on doors. | |
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| Sewage grease balls and a devil's staircase. | |
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| Akira Okubo, master of swarm mathematics. | |
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| Daredevil drift reading on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. | |
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| Chasing snarks with the Russians. | |
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| An ocean full of eddies. | |
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| Messages in Bottles | |
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| My father's many illnesses. | |
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| Our family is reunited in Seattle. | |
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| Oil bust and near bankruptcy. | |
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| Chasing the Gulf Stream's frontal eddies. | |
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| The frustrations of environmental consulting. | |
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| Low-tech drift sticks on Port Ludlow. | |
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| The Vikings release the first ocean drifters and find new harbors. | |
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| Yasuyori's wave-borne verse. | |
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| The science of determinate drifters and the mystique of message bottles. | |
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| Edgar Allan Poe, oceanographic seer. | |
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| Guinness rules the waves. | |
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| The czar's bottle. | |
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| Gospel bombs and bottled salvation. | |
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| I dedicate myself to drifters. | |
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| Eureka, a Sneaker! | |
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| The Great Sneaker Spill. | |
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| Shippers stonewall, but Nike shares its secrets. | |
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| The joy of beachcombing. | |
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| OSCURS predicts the sneakers' path. | |
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| Another spill: beavers, frogs, turtles, and ducks. | |
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| Ducky mania. | |
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| OSCURS aces another blind test. | |
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| The tub toys round the Aleut Gyre. | |
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| Pacific Pathways comes to Sitka. | |
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| Oceanic wheels within wheels. | |
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| An epic freedom drifter. | |
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| Hockey gloves outrace sneakers. | |
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| Wind and waves sort left from right. | |
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| Why nature is two-sided. | |
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| Coffins, Castaways, and Cadavers | |
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| Four right feet. | |
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| The float-away corpse. | |
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| Ignoring the oil-spill omens. | |
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| Dad's passing and the Beachcombers' Alert. | |
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| Isis, Osiris, Moses, and Genghis. | |
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| Freedom floaters and the Loop Current. | |
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| Nelson Eddy strikes. Freedom's price. | |
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| Floaters and sinkers. | |
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| Follow the shark. | |
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| The mystery of Barnacle Bill. | |
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| The dead don't stay down. | |
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| I lose my sea legs. | |
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| The Admiral of the Floating World | |
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| Far-flung flotsam in the Mediterranean catch basin. | |
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| Awakening to Columbus. | |
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| How sea beans conquered the sea. | |
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| The first flotsamologist. | |
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| The Azores dumping ground. | |
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| Messengers from "Cathay." | |
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| Invasion of the Finnmen. | |
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| Reading the waters, not the maps. | |
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| Phantom islands. | |
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| Cross Creek's floating archipelago. | |
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| Columbus's message in a barrel. | |
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| Borne on a Black Current | |
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| Ancient volcanic emigrants. | |
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| The mighty Kuroshio sweeps them away. | |
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| Asian infusions in America. | |
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| Castaways from the hermit shogunate. | |
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| Ranald MacDonald's bold mission to Japan. | |
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| Wrecked junks at Malarrimo. | |
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| The American Coastal Pathway. | |
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| The Great Conveyor | |
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| Ban beans, brick beads, and buoyant urns. | |
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| One mystery leads to another. | |
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| The forgotten gyres, rediscovered and renamed. | |
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| Amos Wood follows the fishing floats. | |
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| Buzzy's board rounds the gyre. | |
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| Tracking water by standing still. | |
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| Orbital periods. | |
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| Handoffs between gyres. | |
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| Wheels within watery wheels. | |
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| The global conveyor belt. | |
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| Ashes to Ashes, Life from the Sea | |
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| Akira and Keiko, apart but inseparable. | |
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| A young planet covered in floating rock. | |
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| Pumice as primordial incubator. | |
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| Akira and I broach our new theory of life's beginnings. | |
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| Akira's end. | |
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| A farewell feast. | |
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| We flush Keiko out to sea. | |
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| My parents join Akira and Keiko in the Turtle Gyre. | |
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| Junk Beach and Garbage Patch | |
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| Growing official and corporate indifference to marine environmental threats. | |
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| Deaf ears and cold shoulders. | |
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| Frustration and early retirement. | |
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| How a garbage patch forms: Hadley cells and reverse hurricanes. | |
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| Huxley and Mann on Rubber Beach. | |
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| St. Paul's suffering fur seals. | |
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| Collector beaches. | |
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| Hawaiian convergence. | |
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| How the islanders used the currents. | |
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| We reach Junk Beach. | |
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| Cleanups, pileups, and an unending washup. | |
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| Charlie Moore's war on marine dumping. | |
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| Turtle beach and plastic sea. | |
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| The Synthetic Sea | |
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| Plastic, born in mimicry. | |
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| Pool balls and piano keys: seeking an ivory substitute. | |
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| Plastic-packed albatrosses. | |
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| Molecular mimicry. | |
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| Endocrine disruptors and feminization. | |
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| Nurdles sponge up greasy pollutants. | |
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| Petroleum, plastic, lead, and mercury: which is worse? | |
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| Rat poison canisters at the Fun Fair. | |
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| The Music of the Gyres | |
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| The gyre orbits add up. | |
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| Oceanic octaves, a global harmonic series. | |
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| Melting the Arctic and speeding the gyres. | |
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| Farewell, fundamental tone. | |
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| Finding hope. | |
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| Urban Legends of the Sea | |
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| The cold truth about Theophrastus's bottles, Queen Elizabeth's uncorker, the Octavius's drift, the Sydney's globe-circling lifebelt, Daisy Alexander's $6 million bottle, and Clyde Pangborn's missing wheel. | |
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| A Million Drifting Messages | |
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| The Oceanic Gyres | |
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| Ocean Memory | |
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| Harmonics of the Gyres | |
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| Gyres and other orbiting currents classified by tone-length of orbital period-from longest to shortest. | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Ilustration Credits | |
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| Glossary | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Index | |