Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam

This is a very informative, enjoyable book. This short volume covers the full range of things that the sea gives up to the land. Exploring everything from seaweed to missives in bottles this is a wonderful book on a little known subject, little known to most of us landlubbers at least. Ms. Moody is a long time lover of the sea and the descendent of seafarers who writes with an easy chatty style. The volume is very loosely tied together by her search for the identity of a mysterious item that she failed to pick up on a beachcombing expedition. This recurring theme proves to be, in my eyes at least, to give the only weakness in the book. There is a recurring dialog with a psychiatrist throughout the book that I found confusing. I was unable to decide if this was an actual problem the author had or a reflection on society's viewpoint toward people with non mainstream hobbies. However, this was a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to anyone. My one tiny quibble may well reflect my weakness as a reader as opposed to any fault Ms Moody has as an author.

The author has travelled all over the world and beachcombed. She uses humor to teach us about ocean currents that take items from say Japan to the Washington state coast. I was expecting a book about beachcombing, another quick read about glass floats and driftwood. But this book is so much more than that. Skye explains currents. She explains about sperm whales that regurgitate a product that can be found on some beaches, then warns us about buying this products on the internet. (It's illegal in the states to purchase products from sperm whales because they are an endangered species.) She also writes about the problem of dumping wastes in our oceans, and how that affects the food chain. All of this is done in a highly readable writing style, laced with a sharp humor. Weaving through the book is a tale about an item she found at Alkai Beach in Seattle, but she discarded thinking she couldn't possibly carry one more item. She regrets having tossed it. I'm glad I purchased and read this book. Now, I must go...beachcombing!

Skye Moody has been a journalist covering Ukrainian coal mining and Siberian reindeer herding, a bush guide in East Africa, a literature teacher, a poet, and a novelist. She has also written nonfiction books before, but has now written one about a subject in which what she is really interested. Moody is a flotsamist, which is a fancy way of saying she is a beachcomber. In _Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam_ (Sasquatch Books), she has described her passion with all the enthusiasm of the most devoted hobbyist. There's always a danger that someone writing about a hobby will be unable to communicate the hobby's fascination to those who don't share the passion, but there is no such problem in Moody's book. For one thing, the subject is inherently fascinating; no one who has ever walked on a beach has failed to pay attention to shells, driftwood, seaweed, or bottles that have washed up on the sand. For another, Moody is a funny writer, amused by her own obsession and by those who share it. For yet another, studying what travels around the ocean can be scientific evidence of how currents work, so tracking flotsam is not a trivial folly. In 1990, Nike shoes began washing up on the beaches of the Pacific northwest. Six months before, a huge container ship had lost twenty-one shipping containers in a severe storm, including five containers holding 80,000 Nike shoes. This was bad news for Nike, but good news for oceanographers who could track the shoes and improve their models of ocean currents. The flotsamists who collected the shoes realized that there were few matches; the laces of the shoes had not been tied together, so shortly after being dunked, the right shoes parted ways from the left shoes. The parting was not random. The slight change in curvature between left and right shoes caused the righties to follow the northward Alaska current and show up around Queen Charlotte Sound, while the lefties tended to follow the southward California current and wound up in Oregon. The most romantic of all flotsam is the message in a bottle; even if you have never found one, you know how eager you would be to open a washed-up bottle containing a message. Some bottles are literally vectors of romance. In 1956, a Swedish sailor jettisoned a bottled note overboard, asking for a reply from any pretty girl who found it. A Sicilian fisherman eventually found the bottle, and gave it to his daughter as a joke. Some joke: two years later, the couple were married. The saga of flotsam isn't all trivial fun. There are important issues mentioned here having to do with the modern ways we use the seas. Loose cargo used not to be a big problem; below decks, it only went down if the ship went down. Modern container ships, however, stow many of their big boxes in the open, where they are liable to be washed over in a storm. The boxes can float at least temporarily, and are a significant traffic hazard on the sea, especially at night. T

This is a book for filling your head with amazing facts to regurgitate when walking on the beach with friends or children. I can attest to the latter's fascination with tales of astronaut poop, and the origins of ambergris, the fragrant sea-borne product of whale regurgitation. The book collects together stories from across the globe and over the centuries, in styles reminiscent of People Magazine (with photographs), Tattler and National Geographic. Moody has a journalist's eye for detail, and a storyteller's ability to inject dry facts with human interest. Her name-dropping is both cheeky and fun. She covers whimsical topics (floating phalluses) and serious ones (the proliferation of plastic garbage in the tidal gyres of the Pacific), but it's a quick read, ideal for say, a flight to Melanesia (home of the cargo cultists). The book could do with an index, to allow the reader to locate and re-read some of the more interesting tales. And, there was an unfortunate bobble in the explanation of why driftwood floats. But neither criticism detracts from what is an entertaining and informative read. I recommend it.

"Washed Up" is a beautifully written collage about the tangled, tide-driven world of flotsam and jetsam. Reminiscent of Kurlanski's "History of Salt," the book is well-researched--chock full of history, science, flotsamist characters, and legends of the sea. Sometimes exotic, sometimes quirky, sometimes amazing, "Washed Up" is a marvelous voyage. Author Skye Moody clearly loves the sea, adding her own flotsamist obsessions to carry the reader on a tour both informative and funny. By the time I was done, I understood terms like lagan, wrack, spermacetti, and gyre, but even more, I felt so much the richer and wiser about our indelible human impact on Earth's oceans.