I see in the news that some rubber duckies dumped in the Pacific Ocean sometime late in the last century, are washing ashore in New England. The media seems to believe that science will learn something about ocean currents from this event.

I don't think so. If you get a map of the currents in the world ocean, you can easily trace the path of said duckies. A rubber duckie rides fairly high in the water and would probably be moved more by wind than currents, but since the currents are mainly driven by prevailing winds, this would do little more than disperse them and maybe speed them up a bit.

Science likes to learn from things with as few variables as possible, so this little accidental experiment, would be of little use. But it's interesting from a non-scientific standpoint.

Maybe rubber turtles with ballast to keep them just below the surface would work better.
Howard