Japanese debris still floating in the Pacific, eventually to land on North American shores.
By Adonai
May 22, 2012
The
first wave of Japanese tsunami debris has hit Alaskan shores and is turning
part of the area into a landfill. There is no abnormal level of radiation but
much of it is toxic, according to CNN video posted below.
On
Kayak Island, roughly 100 km (60 miles) southeast of Cordova, hundreds of
buoys, thousands of bottles, countless fuel cans, shoes, chunks of building
insulation, and other household items litter the beach for miles.
It’s
even worse on Montague Island, according to Chris Pallister, president of Gulf
of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit group which cleans up beaches each spring and
summer.
“It’s
a staggering mess,” he said during a visit to Kayak Island last Friday, “the
magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this
stuff a long time.”
“It
is going to take years to clean this mess up,” he told CNN.
U.S. Sen. Mark
Begich wants the federal government to provide at least $45 million to clean up
debris that will land on U.S. shores from last year’s tsunami in Japan.
While
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been tracking the
problem, Begich says it has limited resources and cannot alone be expected to
handle what he calls a “monumental crisis.”
Begich
says the debris that’s already washed ashore in Alaska is just the beginning of
what he calls a “slow-motion environmental disaster that will unfold over the
next several years.”
The
Japanese government estimated that the tsunami generated 25 million tons of
rubble, but there is no clear understanding of exactly how much debris was
swept into the water nor what remained afloat.
The
floating debris ~ which includes destroyed homes, wrecked fishing vessels, and
even human remains ~ is shown in a computerized projection crafted by
researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who say by 2014 the wreckage will
stretch from Alaska to Mexico.
The
projections, made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International
Pacific Research Center, show a destructive path covering more than 7200 km
(4,500 miles) on Pacific Ocean currents, pushed by wind and water to reach the
far-reaching beaches of North America.
The larger debris
field is now expected to come ashore this year, according to new estimates by
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
An
earlier model had suggested that the bulk of the debris, which is now dispersed
north of the Hawaiian islands, would wash up on the West Coast next year. But
now government agencies and local volunteer groups are moving their
preparations forward.
Featured image: Marine debris found
at Beach River. Image by Chris Pallister - Gulf of Alaska Keeper
- www.goak.org
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