Research tip: Oranges
7 February 2005, AP Wire

Marine researchers studying ocean circulation patterns have come up with an environmentally friendly technique as reported by Associated Press. Wanting to discover if circulation patterns around a peninsula were effecting the migration of seaweed's reproductive cells, and whether that was contributing to changes in the plant's organic structure, they decided to give navel oranges a try.

They bought 500 navel oranges, inscribed an e-mail address and phone number on each one using a waterproof permanent marker, and enlisted fishermen and other groups to throw them into the ocean. They used oranges because these were inexpensive, biodegradable, buoyant and visible. In all, 54 of the oranges were found, a return rate of about 11 percent. With the volume of the ocean, that the oranges were put into, it is an astonishing result. The orange experiment is a test run for a bigger research project.

[CIESM Editor's comment: One of our faithful readers remarks that thin slices of parsnip make even better surface drifters than oranges, too much affected by windage, as the noted applied mathematician / meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson found out many years ago.]