---
product_id: 2249934
title: "Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them"
brand: "donovan hohn"
price: "135.34 DT"
currency: TND
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/2249934-moby-duck-the-true-story-of-28-800-bath-toys
store_origin: TN
region: Tunisia
---

# Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them

**Brand:** donovan hohn
**Price:** 135.34 DT
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them by donovan hohn
- **How much does it cost?** 135.34 DT with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tn](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/2249934-moby-duck-the-true-story-of-28-800-bath-toys)

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## Description

A compulsively readable narrative of whimsy and curiosity- "adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times
).
When the writer Donovan Hohn heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography. But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away. Hohn's accidental odyssey pulls him into the secretive arena of shipping conglomerates, the daring work of Arctic researchers, the lunatic risks of maverick sailors, and the shadowy world of Chinese toy factories. Moby-Duck is a journey into the heart of the sea and an adventure through science, myth, the global economy, and some of the worst weather imaginable.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Dimensions | 5.5 x 0.96 x 8.45 inches |
| Edition | Reprint |
| Isbn 10 | 0143120506 |
| Isbn 13 | 978-0143120506 |
| Item Weight | 11.9 ounces |
| Language | English |
| Print Length | 416 pages |
| Publication Date | February 28, 2012 |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |

## Images

![Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81bTke16-DL.jpg)

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Ducky Review
*by  on Reviewed in the United States November 30, 2011*

What worlds lie within a rubber duck? To discover the answer read Donovan Hohn's, 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. I did and loved every word.Hohn takes us on several journeys, both interior and exterior, as he follows the trail of the bath toys, called Friendly Floatees, which plunged into the northern Pacific Ocean from a container ship one stormy night (or maybe day)in January of 1992 and floated away into the annals of history and myth. He stumbles on the story late one night while grading a paper for project he'd assigned his high school journalism class based on James Agee's concept, the archeology of the ordinary. Hohn writes, "If like Agee my students could learn to study a thing--any particular thing--`almost illimitably long,'...they too might begin to perceive `the cruel radiance of what is' rather than the narcotic shimmer of what isn't. Or so my hopeful thinking went."Prone to nighttime flights of imagination, intrigued by the quixotic rubber ducks that float from the Pacific Ocean, through the Arctic into and the Atlantic, Hohn pictures a flotilla of cheerful yellow duckies bobbing to the surface mid-Pacific,and fanning out as far as the eye can see. It is a charming image; he is hooked. After some research and phone call to the oceanographer who had been tracking the movements of the toys, he opens his atlas, puts his finger on the coordinates of the cargo spill and conceives a plan to travel in search of the elusive toys, which he's discovered are plastic, not rubber, and not only ducks but frogs, beavers, and turtles. More importantly, he's found that there were no confirmed Floatee sightings in the Atlantic. Thoroughly obsessed, he sets out to discover as much of the truth of the toys as he can, and to turn his "map into a world."In pursuit of answers Hohn travels to Seattle where he interviews a retired oceanographer who writes parodies of Sherlock Holmes stories in a self-published newsletter, Beachcomber's Alert, to Alaska where he participates in a project to airlift tons of plastic litter from an isolated stretch of coastline on the Kenai Peninsula and is made to quack like a duck in a shady bar, to the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch on a catamaran trawling for plastic debris and to China's Pearl River Delta Economic Zone where he visits the factory in which the Flotees were made. He crosses the northern Pacific in winter on a container ship passing close to the very site of the toy spill. He journeys into the North Atlantic aboard a research vessel deploying instruments in the Labrador Sea and embarks on a scientific mission aboard the first icebreaker ever to transit the entire Northwest Passage in early July.As Hohn chases his image of happy duckies a-bob on the sea, it takes on some disturbing implications. With him, we learn of the plight of the Laysan Albatross, "the world's most voracious palstivore." We learn about the chemistry of plastic, and how the vast amounts we put into our oceans concentrate deadly toxins, moving them through food chains. We discover the six degrees of freedom that ships experience, and the staggering cost in human lives the shipping industry claims each year. We learn about labor practices in Chinese factories, the rise of the toy industry and the vagaries of global consumerism. We plumb the histories of American environmentalism, arctic exploration and the changing social perceptions of childhood.Hohn masterfully weaves these diverse subjects together into a cohesive narrative told with dazzling images rendered in sparking prose. He makes us care about the plight of the Laysan Albatross, among other things, by bringing his subjects alive, focusing his clear eye intently, minutely on his surroundings and by setting the larger story of the Floatees against the backdrop of his personal experience. We see him racing to uncover flotsam mysteries in Alaska while hoping to get home for the birth of his first child. He writes as compellingly about taking a walk with his toddler along the Hudson River as he does about standing on the Arctic icecap.With Moby Duck, Hohn achieves beautifully, what he hoped his students would. He studies an ordinary object `almost illimitably long,' embarking on a journey of discovery, and I gladly followed his travels as he pursued the `cruel radiance' of rubber ducks with insight, humor and the unerring eye of a consummate storyteller, thus turning his map--indeed--into a world for himself and his readers. I look forward to his next book, which I hope will be about tweezers, cotton balls or bubble gum--or some other equally ordinary thing.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A delightful, and far-ranging, read
*by  on Reviewed in the United States March 25, 2011*

Donovan Hohn is new to me, and immediately joins the very small set of writers (John McPhee, Adam Nicholson, Barbara Kingsolver, Ian Frazier...) that merit an "automatic buy" of any non-fiction they write, literally even if the title be: "Toe-Jam."[Update: I still haven't finished this book, having elevated it all the way to bathroom book, to prolong it longer: 20 minutes per day is a lovely dose. I'm realizing the author is more sly than he presents himself, but at this point I'm willing to forgive him anything.But sly? At one point, a team he's with want to use ATVs to move several tons of collected plastic garbage across a wild, beautiful Alaskan isthmus so that it can be safely removed by boat. They're forbidden because archeologists complain that the ATVs might damage spruce trees that were "culturally-modified" by the ancient Unegkurmiut people. The team members rant on about how Spotted-Owl-ridiculous this all is, and make jokes about doing some "cultural modification" of trees using their chainsaws. Hohn opens the next paragraph discussing the Stockholm Syndrome, and how people tend to sympathize with the people they're with, but the rest of the paragraph is a description of the Unegkurmiut people, how utterly central the spruce trees were to their existence, and how future archeologists would curse the cleanup crew with the same breath used to curse Schliemann if their ATVs dragged garbage through the area. Sly.Right now he's addressing his lifelong fear of water after watching "Jaws" at summer camp, and wondering if he has not somehow transmitted his fear into his young son by telepathy. At the same time he's also describing the run-in he's having with a certain recently-famous Alaskan governor, who vetoed funding for beach cleanup on State land because ... well, Alaska didn't PRODUCE the garbage, so it's not responsible for it...]None of the other reviewers mention, but Hohn is also a genuine lover of words. Shortly after he boards a ferry for Alaska, we get: "I stand at the taffrail and think to myself 'taffrail,' enjoying the reunion of a thing and its word." That occurs on page 51, and I immediately relaxed into the book and literally put my feet up, secure that I was in the hands of a fellow-spirit.Of course the story isn't about rubber duckies: the ducks are simply the fulcrum he places his lever on, the MacGuffin. He brings himself along as well: far better than dispassionate, invisible observer, he slips just a little of himself into the story, somewhat like John McPhee in The Control of Nature standing on a vibrating lava tube, looking down a hole onto the red flow itself, and admitting a fear-thrill a clear order of magnitude greater than any other in his life.Hohn knows his science, but doesn't lord it over us; you get the sense of discovering things along with him. But perhaps the greatest joy of the book is how much a student of human nature he is. He's the sort of person who sits in a railway carriage and actually looks at the other people present, observes them, converses with them out of interest. I don't care who you are: you will learn plenty, reading this book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ froggies and beavers and ducks, oh my!
*by  on Reviewed in the United States November 30, 2011*

When I first heard about this book I immediately downloaded it onto my Kindle. Who could resist the story of 28,000 polyethylene bath toys falling into the drink from the three-story height of a cargo ship during an Arctic storm in 1992? I needed to read the book in smallish doses and an ebook wasn't the best way to do it. I wanted to go back, forward, re-read passages without getting lost, slosh around in the story the way the ducks (who weren't made of rubber) floated around the various oceans of the world. I wanted to underline in pencil, carry it around until the pages were salt and cappuccino-stained. The way I imagine my book would look if I were really with Donovan Hohn on the beaches of Alaska, Hawaii, or in a boat on the North Pacific. I'd even enjoy his company in the Arctic. But paper, ebook, or oral tale, the story compels.Hohn became obsessed with tracing the sea-going course of the lost toys. Specifically, rubber duck icons of ageless nostalgia. The beginning of his journeying couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time, as he and his wife were soon expecting their first child. But the pull to untangle the mystery surrounding the spill and the occasional appearance of a toy thousands of miles and years away, were too strong to ignore. Most people dream of secret adventure, but how many of us actually manifest it? He did. And along the way got involved with a cast of diverse characters and facts. He wrote: "I was improvising, surrendering to happenstance, riding the drift, and with every passing day the drift was leading me into wilder waters". In his hands, the quest becomes universal and accessible to us.I looked forward to personal narrative as a diversion from the information-packed story. I'm not a scientific type and there were times when my mind wandered and I skipped ahead. It was as if the facts sometimes got caught in eddies of thick seaweed. I longed to rake it away and release them, but Hohn is a wise writer and did it without my help. And the information was still there if I wanted it.In spite of adventure, back breaking work (literally in Hohn's case), references to Moby Dick, and clear details, what hovers like a silently gathering tsunami is the treachery of tons of zombie-plastic in the waters of our planet. What remains in my mind, besides the eternally mythical bobbing ducks, are images of baby seabirds ingesting what will kill them, pristine beaches become garbage dumps, remote seas swirling with the world's disposables. This book is a good read and may become the wake-up call we need.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanograp hers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them
- Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science

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*Last updated: 2026-09-08*