Reward: Lost Ducks - Contact NASA

What's that caution, again? When things seem too good to be true, they usually are, right. An adage whose worth is demonstrated on a regular basis, from economics to politics, to social engineering, to scientific experimentation. There doesn't appear to be any easy roads to accomplishing a desired outcome.

Some bright light thought how functional it would be, aside from quirky, to utilize an everyday object beloved of children, to assist science in ascertaining ocean movement and Arctic ice-melt. A marriage of low-tech with high science. And so it was that NASA went shopping and bought up about a hundred of those cute yellow ducks that kiddies play with in their bath.

Scientists thought the ducks would turn up, be turned in, and through determining where they showed up from where they had been deposited into holes in the ice of Greenland, their long sea voyage could be interpreted, at low cost, little physical effort, low dollar expenditure.

Makes good sense, after all. Whatever winds up in the ocean will be sent on a long journey, pushed onward by variable winds and the action of the waves; held hostage on occasion by forces of nature that entrap small bobbing objects, but eventually loosed, and who knows where they might turn up?

It was a tantalizing prospect, an exciting one, proving that you don't have to be a tech-wizard, or require heavy funding, or wrack the scientific mind to coax nature to arrive at a practical solution which in turn would surrender valuable data. Trouble is, the hoped-for break-through that would allow environmental scientists to track the manner of Arctic ice melt, isn't materializing.

Those duckies have proven to be ultra-elusive. None of the 90 insouciant bobbing objects have yet turned up, anywhere that can be determined. Their colourful buoyancy and durability hasn't yet delivered information useful to glaciologists because it would appear no fortuitous helper in the great wide world has yet picked one up, seen the email address and that irresistible promise of a reward to clock in.

You might think that the likeliest individuals to come across these bobbers might be an northern-dweller; well, among the languages stamped on the duckies was Inuktitut. Could be that people in the Far North have become accustomed to noting the presence of exotic flotsam in their once-pristine waters, and simply ignore them.

They'd perhaps be more inclined to notice the floating robotic probe with its GPS positioning transmitter. It too has proved itself to be in the dud category, since no communications have been received through the auspices of its hi-tech batteries. It's assumed the probe has somehow got stuck under the ice.

Back to the drawing board. Nature continues to hold her secrets close to her irritated bosom.