Storm causes container spill

In May 1990, a severe storm caused 21 containers to fall off the cargo ship Hansa Carrier, which was sailing south of the Alaska Peninsula. Five of these containers held Nike shoes, and four of them opened, releasing over 61,000 shoes into the Pacific Ocean. The fifth container sank.

Shoes drift across the Pacific

The shoes began washing up on beaches in Washington state in November and December 1990. By early 1991, they appeared on Vancouver Island and then in Queen Charlotte Sound, Canada, moving north with the winter Davidson Current. By late March 1991, seasonal wind changes reversed the direction, and the shoes started appearing on Oregon’s coast in April and May 1991.

Community response and market activity

Residents organized shoe exchanges to find matching pairs, as left and right shoes often ended up on different beaches. Some shoes were sold on the street, with one person collecting 1,600 shoes and noting where and when they washed up. A Seattle newspaper reported thousands of shoes found on Oregon beaches in May 1991.

Oceanographer studies the spill

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer learned about the event through a newspaper clipping shown to him by his mother. Having previously studied ocean currents using buoys, Ebbesmeyer saw the shoe spill as a unique opportunity to study ocean currents with tens of thousands of identifiable objects. Nike provided details about the accident but did not allow the story to be used for advertising.

Scientific analysis and findings

Ebbesmeyer collaborated with Jim Ingraham, who had developed a surface current simulator called OSCURS at NOAA. Their model predicted the arrival of shoes in Washington in late 1990 and on Vancouver Island in early 1991, matching real observations. They used verified groups of shoes found together, totaling 1,300 for the study. A group of 250 shoes was found in the Queen Charlotte Islands but none reached Alaska, likely due to the Davidson Current.

Long-term effects and research

Ebbesmeyer noted that left and right shoes drifted differently, attributing this to the shape of the shoe and how it catches wind. In 1992, Nike shoes were found on the north coast of Hawaii after three years at sea, still usable. Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham published their findings in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union. This event, known as the "Great Shoe Spill of 1990," helped calculate the orbits of the eleven major oceanic whirlpools on Earth.

Another maritime incident

In 1997, a cargo ship lost nearly 5 million Lego pieces off the coast of Cornwall, some of which still wash up on beaches today.