A lovely story from TimesOnline regarding the imminent arrival on our shores of hundreds of yellow, plastic ducks.

Back in 1992, 15 years ago – three 40 foot containers full of Chinese made plastic ducks, fell into the Pacific when their US bound ship got caught in a storm. About two thirds of them floated south ending up on the shores of Indonesia, Australia and South America. But 10,000 headed north and by the end of the year were off Alaska!

Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are expected to reach Britain after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States. Those that had not been trapped in circulating currents in the North Pacific, crushed by icebergs or blown ashore in Japan are bobbing across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream.

But this gets weirder. The toys’ American distributor, First Years Inc., are offering a reward for anyone finding one. Any beachcomber coming across one of these now bleached white plastic ducks, can claim a $100 (£50) reward! But why do that when you can put it up on eBay where collectors have paid as much as £500 for one. On a more serious note though:

Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said that the ducks offered a great opportunity for climate change research. “They are a nice tracer for what the currents are doing as they travel around the world, and currents are what determines our climate, and cycles of carbon.

“I would ask holidaymakers to keep an eye out, as they might be very few and far between by now. It’s a real adventure story and the plastic should last 100 years, so we hope it will continue.”

Now isn’t that a nice story?