Rubber Duckie Day

What the day is

Rubber Duckie Day is observed on January 13, generally tied to the 1970 song from Sesame Street that made the toy a cultural fixture rather than just a bath item.

Origin and background

The duck's most useful moment came by accident. In 1992 a shipping container went overboard in the North Pacific and released tens of thousands of plastic bath toys into the open ocean. Because the shipment was documented, the release point and date were known precisely, which is the one thing drifting debris almost never provides.

Oceanographers seized on it. Tracking where the toys came ashore, and when, gave real measurements of surface current speed and direction across an enormous area, at a time when the alternative was releasing drift bottles deliberately and hoping. Toys landed in Alaska, and models predicted that some would circulate for years, pass through the Bering Strait, freeze into Arctic ice and emerge in the North Atlantic. Reports of finds continued for well over a decade.

The same work helped map the ocean gyres, the slow rotating systems that concentrate floating material into the garbage patches now widely reported. The ducks were early, cheerful evidence of a much less cheerful phenomenon.

The toy has a second, quieter problem. A sealed duck with a hole in the base draws in water each squeeze, and warm bathwater and organic residue make the inside an excellent culture for microbial growth. A study that cut open used bath toys found dense films inside most of them. The fix is simple: seal the hole, or squeeze the duck out and let it dry.

How to take part

• Check inside an old bath duck. What comes out is genuinely persuasive.
• Seal the hole with a dab of glue so nothing gets in.
• Read about the 1992 spill and what it taught oceanography.
• Squeeze toys empty and dry them after a bath rather than leaving them afloat.
• Give one to a child, which remains the point.