HAVERHILL, Massachusetts — A scuba diver searching for items used in stained-glass artwork said he’s found countless rubber ducks on the Merrimack River bed, and he believes they are from the Rotary Club’s Duck Regatta.
Rotary officials said it is possible some of the rubber ducks dropped from the Comeau Bridge this year and in prior duck drops broke apart when they hit the surface of the water or took on water and sank.
“We found that more ducks were missing this year,” said John Cuneo, co-chairman of Rotary’s Rubber Duck Regatta, which raises money for charities. “We have to do an inventory each year for the company that leases us the ducks. I think it’s mostly older ducks [that are missing], although we don’t have a system of age.”
Diver Richard Carney, 55, of Brunswick, Maine, was traveling through the area Oct. 20 and stopped in Haverhill to search for artifacts at the bottom of the river in the area of the train bridge.
A treasure hunter and glass collector for many years, Carney often finds items such as pottery and bottles that people tossed from train bridges and other bridges throughout New England, often more than a century ago.
Since becoming an artist 10 years ago, he has been incorporating his found treasures into 3-D stained-glass art pieces. Carney operates Old Bottle Sea Glass of Maine.
“I treasure hunt for old bottles, broken pieces of pottery and other items for my artwork,” Carney said.
But what he encountered in Haverhill was something he never saw in previous dives into rivers or midcoast harbors, where he does most of his treasure hunting.
“I was looking for glass electric insulators and railroad items, such as lanterns and brass padlocks they used to lock switches with,” Carney said. “A lot of those things get tossed off bridges. When the railroad people crossed the bridges, they’d get rid of their trash.”
Carney began his dive in Haverhill behind the Tap Restaurant. He scoured the river beneath the railroad bridge and adjacent Comeau Bridge and, through his face mask, saw an unusual sight — small yellow shapes. As he got closer, he realized they were pieces of yellow rubber ducks. There were heads and bodies, as well as fully intact ducks.
“At first, I thought they were a cool thing to find,” Carney said. “I found three heads at first, so I set them on a rock and took a photo. I called them Huey, Dewey and Louie, like the Disney characters. Then I found that they were everywhere, as far as I could swim in every direction.”
Carney said many of the ducks looked like they had been ripped apart. Heads were torn from bodies, he said.
“I found hundreds of them in piles of five to 20 or so, and quit counting at 600 during one dive,” he said. “I swam from the dock behind the Tap and upstream to the railroad bridge and along the shoreline. They were sitting in piles, where obstructions kept them from being pushed down river.”
“I wonder if this is seriously polluting the river and if anyone even knows they are there?” he said.
Carney later learned that rubber ducks typically are used in fundraising events, such as the Haverhill Rotary Club’s annual Rubber Duck Regatta.
“It’s not just the Rotary Club in Haverhill. It’s everywhere,” Carney said of how often rubber ducks are used for such events. “So if you consider what’s on the bottom of the Merrimack, think about how many ducks could be in other places around the world.”
Haverhill’s Rubber Duck Regatta was launched in 2009. People paid to “adopt” numbered ducks, thousands of which were dropped from the Basiliere Bridge into the river. The first duck to float down river to the finish line won a new car for whoever adopted the duck. Cuneo said the ducks are provided by GAME, or Great American Merchandise & Events.
The money raised by the duck regatta provides support for several local organizations, including the YMCA, YWCA, the Boys & Girls Club, Emmaus Inc., Community Action, Bethany Homes, Team Coordinating Agency and Merrimack Valley Hospice, Cuneo said.
Starting in 2013, the duck race has been part of Team Haverhill’s annual downtown River Ruckus event. The duck drop was moved up river to the Comeau Bridge, next to the railroad bridge that carries commuter and freight trains. This year’s grand prize was $10,000, donated to the event by Rockingham Toyota-Honda Scion of Salem, New Hampshire.
Cuneo said that in past duck races, faulty floating booms used to contain the ducks and funnel them to the finish line failed and allowed some ducks to break free.
“One year, we lost a lot of ducks downriver, and we had to chase them and try to round up as many as possible,” Cuneo said. “One of the things we noticed this year was that we had a lot of broken ducks.
“When we were watching the ducks float down the river, the wind was very strong and was pushing some of them back up the river,” Cuneo said. “My theory is that the ones that took on water were moving faster, as they weren’t experiencing much wind resistance as the ducks that were sitting higher in the water.”
Cuneo said the weakest point of the ducks seems to be their necks, which is where they are most likely to separate from their bodies.
“Certainly it’s not great for the river, and I wish it wasn’t happening,” Cuneo said. “Losing even one duck is not great. As for the impact on the river, you want a natural environment to remain as natural as possible.”
Carney’s underwater treasure hunting has yielded a vast array of items he uses in his artwork.
His dive in Haverhill yielded a piece of a porcelain toilet tank from the 1890s or early 1900s, a piece of a clay jug, a section of a porcelain vase, a jadeite egg holder, a jadeite juicer, a toilet water bottle from the 1890s, the insides of a clock and other items.
“There was so much stuff there that I couldn’t begin to bring it all home,” Carney said. “Back in the 1800s, people would dump their trash into rivers without any thought of consequences. Rivers contain generations of discarded items. All of it is just waiting to be picked up, and I’m one of the few people who get to see it all and actively seek it out.”
Carney kept several duck pieces he found in Haverhill as mementos. In all, he gathered up about 40 items to use in his artwork.
“I also found an old spyglass, like a brass pirate’s spyglass, although it was all corroded but the lenses were intact,” Carney said.
Carney said he is always looking for old things, primarily from the mid-1800s.
“The bottles you find from that era are very rare,” he said. “And when I do underwater metal detecting, I find rings and coins and buckles and anchors and other things.”
“I also seek out sites such as old swimming areas where people haven’t been in decades,” he said.
More information about Carney is available online at seaglassofmaine.com.
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