Are too many drifters being deployed?

Environmentally conscious individuals may be concerned about the ocean eventually getting cluttered with drifters deployed by Return to Sea. A good question. Consider for a moment that the North Atlantic Ocean (from 15 degrees to 70 degrees North latitude, excluding the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean Sea), is approximately 7.6 million square miles.  This is 2.4 times the area of the continental U.S. 48 states. If 100 drifters were deployed in the ocean and they were evenly scattered, each drifter would have 76,000 square miles to itself – comparable to the area of Nebraska or South Dakota. If 1,000 drifters were eventually deployed and evenly distributed, each drifter would have 7,600 square miles to itself, about the size of New Jersey.

Ocean currents may cause drifters to slowly gather within the central gyre of the ocean but this would take years or tens of years, during which time the drifters would disassemble. The eco-friendly cork components would support marine growth while metal and granite non-toxic components would sink to the seafloor over that time period.

Remember that oceanographers and numerical modelers would beg for thousands of drifters to be deployed in the North Atlantic to aid their research and modeling.