The ocean gives up many prizes, just setting them on our beaches for us to find. From rubber ducks that started out somewhere in Indonesia to land Venice Beach, to an intact refrigerator makes it way to the Jersey Shore. Chunks of beeswax found on the Oregon coast are the packing remnants of 18th century Spanish gold. And then there's the naturally occurring flotsam: ambergris, from sperm whales, is eight times more valuable than gold (it's also illegal to buy or sell in the US); seedpods from one part of the globe ride the currents to transplant whole forests (think mangroves in Florida); and then dead whales wash up in the most inconvenient places (the State of Oregon stuffed one with dynamite in an effort to get rid of one large decomposing problem - oops).