03-19-2012, 05:37 PM
They actually have mostly tracked the land fall & boat pick up of floating items, (along with a few trawled up pieces of heavier debris) Some of these pieces were very easy to trace (boat plaques, address & bill boards, very little of it actually did use the radiation isotope signatures of particles - & the water diffused into the ocean was way to dilute to pick up a trace radioactive isotope that was in the original spill water....)
Then, based on the place the items were picked up, they modeled the currents back to the origin of the debris, the forward modeled the paths of the debris. these models use debris release (one famous one was a container ship of tennis shoes... those tennies were traced for a few years as they traveled the Pacific...and formed much of the modeling base work - for tennie sized objects)
Although you made up adding tracers that signal location, the ease of just following lots of signaling tracers would be a dream for many oceanographers, rather than following debris & floating floatsam around the oceans.
ETA: Link to tennie tracers & other current modeling tools:
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANE...nts_2.html
Then, based on the place the items were picked up, they modeled the currents back to the origin of the debris, the forward modeled the paths of the debris. these models use debris release (one famous one was a container ship of tennis shoes... those tennies were traced for a few years as they traveled the Pacific...and formed much of the modeling base work - for tennie sized objects)
Although you made up adding tracers that signal location, the ease of just following lots of signaling tracers would be a dream for many oceanographers, rather than following debris & floating floatsam around the oceans.
ETA: Link to tennie tracers & other current modeling tools:
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANE...nts_2.html