Chapter 1 · Try it yourself

Current Rider

Oceanographers drop drifting buoys into the sea and let the currents take them wherever they go. Pick a starting spot, drop a buoy, and see where the Pacific carries it. Can you find a route that ends at the Galápagos, the islands where penguins live on the equator?

1. Where do you drop the buoy?

2. Let it go

Drift plays the whole trip. “One current at a time” moves the buoy to the end of the next current each time you press it.

Map of the Pacific Ocean with its surface currents. Antarctica is just below the map Equator North Pacific Gyre (turns clockwise) South Pacific Gyre (turns counterclockwise) ASIA AUSTRALIA NORTH AMERICA SOUTH AMERICA Hawaii 123456789 Galápagos

Warm currentCold currentCool currentGyre (big loop)Your buoy

Key to the numbered currents

  1. 1Kuroshio (warm)
  2. 2North Pacific Current (cool)
  3. 3California Current (cold)
  4. 4North Equatorial Current (warm)
  5. 5Equatorial Counter Current (warm)
  6. 6South Equatorial Current (warm)
  7. 7East Australian Current (warm)
  8. 8Antarctic Circumpolar Current (northern edge) (cold)
  9. 9Humboldt (Peru) Current (cold)

Time adrift
0 months

Pick a spot and press Drift.

Galápagos: not yet

    Simplified model: a sketch map, not to scale, with each current drawn as a single line. Real drifting buoys wobble, get caught in eddies and can take very different paths; trip times are rough averages. Warm and cold mean warmer or colder than the water around them at that latitude.