D

　　Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents(洋流). Most do it using satellites and other hightech equipment. However, ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way—by studying movements of random floating garbage. A scientist with many years' experience, he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the north­west coast of the United States. There were so many shoes that people were setting up swap_meets to try and match left and right shoes to sell or wear.

　　Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes—about 60，000 in total—fell into the ocean in a shipping accident. He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back. As expected, the company told him that they didn't. Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment. If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed, he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents.

　　The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's best areas for beachcombing(海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here, and as a result, there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area. Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed. In a year he collected reliable information on

　　1，600 shoes. With this data, he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer programme designed to model ocean currents, and publish the findings

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