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Yetis have been spotted from Seattle to Alaska.
Hundreds of luxury-branded coolers are washing up on shorelines after a freight ship spilled cargo containers into the Pacific Ocean last year and people are now on the hunt for items that cost up to $750.
Scientists who study how debris travels through ocean currents believe the 1,600 coolers lost at sea will be floating around the world for the next 30 years.
Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer told The Wall Street Journal that all the Yetis are ‘right where they are supposed to be’ due to the estimated drift speed of the ocean carrying them seven miles a day.
The spill, however, released toys, urinal mats, refrigerators and other goods that are now littering beaches along the northwestern region of the US and Canada.
Dukke Marolf, who lives in Alaska, has found 19 Yeti coolers on the beach. The coolers fell off a shipping vessel last October
Ebbesmeyer believes the Yeti coolers were traveling aboard the Zim Kingston ship on a path to South Korea.
The ship, however, hit rough water on October 21, 2021, and spilled at least 100 cargo containers into the Pacific, and the coolers are making their way to land.
And beachcombers are flocking to the shores, hoping to scoop up one or more of the expensive coolers.
Duke Marolf, a 38-year-old marine welder and bush pilot in Seward, Alaska, told WSJ that he had found 19 Yetis and is still hunting for more.
‘The Yetis are still out there,’ Ebbesmeyer told the outlet.
‘The coolers will keep circling the world. You’ll be getting reports of people finding Yetis for the next 30 years.’
Reports of a Yeti also came from Hawaii, about 450 miles from where the spill occurred.
While the brightly colored coolers are a great find, the other items are much harder to remove from the ocean and land.
Inflatable toys, floor mats, baby oil and rubber boots are among the garbage littering shorelines that are teaming with wildlife.
A teacher in Port Hard, located in British Colombia, Canada, took her class on a trip to the beach near Cape Scott Provincial Park and the northwest tip of Vancouver Island for a weekly field trip to learn on the land.
But what they saw was a defaced coastline.
Jerika McArter told KUOW: ‘At first we didn’t realize the extent, so it was kinda exciting.
‘But when we walked further down the beach there was a lot of shock, fear of what will happen with all this stuff, how many years it will take to clean this all up, sadness, anger.
‘In the waves you could see more debris floating around, just really overwhelming all of it.’
Hundreds of Yeti coolers are washing on the shorelines of Seattle and up into Alaska
Yeti said it had lost at least 1,600 coolers when the ship capsized in October
Beachcombers are now on the lookout for the colorful, luxury coolers
The Zim Kingston, owned by Greece-based Danaos Shipping Company, burned for a week after containers with combustible chemicals caught fire after stormy weather.
The massive ship flipped to its side before the fire broke, releasing 109 containers into the Pacific.
Radio communications indicate that the crew, including the captain, has been advised to abandon ship by Canadian authorities.
‘The advice is that you abandon, completely abandon, including all crew and captain,’ a Canadian Coast Guard official was heard broadcasting to the ship.
The containers on the ship were lost in rough seas due to a strong low-pressure system that was at hurricane force at times, with seas up to 30 feet.
Inflatable toys, floor mats, baby oil and refrigerators are among the garbage littering shorelines that are teaming with wildlife. All of these items floated out to sea during the cargo ship spill
The Zim Kingston, owned by Greece-based Danaos Shipping Company, burned for a week after containers with combustible chemicals caught fire after stormy weather
A storm is considered a bomb cyclone when its minimum air pressure drops 24 millibars or more within 24 hours, known as bombogenesis.
Between 2008 and 2016, an average of 568 containers were lost per year worldwide, according to a study commissioned by The World Shipping Council.
Ongoing supply chain issues have caused shortages of a wide range of goods, with shipyards backed up and a lack of truck drivers further exacerbating the problem.