"The winds started last June and kept up through the winter," he says. "That only happens about once every 10-20 years and things that have floated around and around the ocean for decades are turning up."

29,000 bathtub toys packed in 20 giant containers fell off the ship in January 1992 and are expected to wash up on New England beaches soon. So far, they've floated 15,000 miles along the Alaska coast through the Bering Strait and along Labrador to Nova Scotia.

On the West Coast, giant glass balls have been washing ashore. These date back to before the 1950s, before plastic buoys, when fishermen attached them to their nets to keep the nets afloat. Ebbesmeyer also expects to find some Nike shoes from a 1999 spill that dumped 50,000 pairs of running shoes into the Pacific.

There's also something known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is a giant mass of old tires, Styrofoam, plastic bottle caps, old toys, sneakers and tiny plastic bits which is as wide as Texas and floats on the Pacific Ocean between Oregon and Hawaii. Most of this junk comes from illegal dumping at sea and is made of plastic, since it doesn't biodegrade. "As long as we consume more plastic, then the patch will keep growing," says Ebbesmeyer.

He estimates approximately 10,000 containers fall overboard every year, mostly due to storms. Each 8-foot-by-40-foot container can carry up to 58,000 pounds of cargo, and the North Pacific's loop of currents and calm winds keep all the junk in one area. Most of it's too tiny or colorless to be detected from space.