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Some floating debris from Japan disaster to show up on Pacific Coast
May take up to two years according to scientists report

PORT ANGELES — After a two-year trans-oceanic journey, earthquake and tsunami debris from Japan is likely to wash ashore on Pacific coastal beaches.

The flotsam and jetsam will hit Vancouver Island first, then head south to the Peninsula's Pacific coastline, then down the rest of the coast to Mexico, said Howard Freeland, a research scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., on Monday.

The detritus will arrive “without doubt,” Freeland said.

It will be carried by the Kuroshio current off Japan in a northerly direction close to the Japanese coast, follow the North Pacific current to Vancouver Island, then travel north to Alaska and south on the California current, Freeland said.

“This stuff can come ashore anywhere from Baja California, Mexico to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands,” he said.

“Anything that floats that far will certainly come ashore,” he said.

“It will just come in dribbles. If anything gets dumped off Tokyo, it will show up off our coast.”

An 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake shook Japan on March 11, followed by a tsunami that swept up to six miles inland on Japan's northeast coast.

Debris from the twin disaster will have to travel about 4,600 miles to reach Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula from Tokyo, floating at an average rate of about 6 miles per day.

That's about a two-year journey, Freeland said.

Wind currents will play a part in where the floating debris lands.

“If they moved only with currents, then the debris would never come to shore,” he told the Victoria Times Colonist on Sunday.

“Water flows around obstacles, not through them. Things drift ashore by being carried long distances with currents and then being blown onshore by winds.”



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