Tag: marine pollution

NOAA makes $250,000 in grants available to states impacted by tsunami debris

Debris from Japan tsunami extends 2,000 miles across Pacific

When a floating dock the size of a boxcar washed up on a sandy beach in Oregon, beachcombers got excited because it was the largest piece of debris from last year's tsunami in Japan to show up on the US West Coast.But scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers and further muck up the West Coast's marine environments. And more invasive species could be hitching rides on tsunami debris expected to arrive in the weeks and months to come."We know extinctions occur with invasions," said John Chapman, assistant professor of fisheries and invasive species specialist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. "This is like arrows shot into the dark. Some of them could hit a mark."Though the global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports, the marine invasion has been in full swing since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions ...

Risk of chemical contamination The spill and spread of industrial chemicals across the coastline of British Columbia is a possibility as slower-moving tsunami debris from Japan approaches the west coast, according to experts observing its movements.The risk of chemical contamination is sizable, especially considering that many of the tsunami-affected areas on the Japanese coast were industrial and used many different types of toxic chemicals in manufacturing operations." could be a real threat," said Dr. M. Sanjayan, the lead scientist at conservation group the Nature Conservancy. "For example, it's very hard to imagine how 50 drums with something could all show up at the same time, unless it's an event like this. That's where it can be a little dangerous."Finding one drum of, say, paint thinner, or something you might find in your garage, it's not hugely toxic. But if you find 50 of them all washed up on a rocky shore and then breaking and leaking, then you have some problems."The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is one of the few organizations keeping tabs on debris movement, constructing models that attempt to predict the movement of the debris as it follows ocean currents. It is also handling cleanup ...

Almost 70 % of the debris swept to sea by last year's tsunami has sunk Bottles, plastic foam and floating buoys are just a few of the scattershot items washing ashore in Alaska, part of a wave of debris surging toward U.S. shores from the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, CNN reports."In the past we would find a few dozen large black buoys, used in Japanese aquaculture, on an outside beach cleanup," Patrick Chandler of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies told Agence France Presse. "Now we see hundreds."Officials estimate almost 70 percent of the debris swept to sea by last year's tsunami has sunk, but that remaining 30 percent has begun showing up on Canadian and American shores in the last few months. In April 2012, a Japanese child's soccer ball turned up in Alaska, a ghost ship had to be sunk, and a lost Harley Davidson washed ashore on Graham Island off the coast of British Columbia.According to CBS News, one-and-a-half million tons of an estimated five million tons of debris remain afloat. And more than radioactivity, toxicity poses the greatest concern when it comes to wreckage."Think about everything in your garage and imagine that dumping in the ...

Search found more than 50 objects that were most likely to be containers An underwater buggy is being used to see if more than 50 large objects spotted at the bottom of the ocean are containers washed overboard from wrecked container ship Rena.This week a comprehensive sonar sweep of about 800 sq km around Rena, stuck on Astrolabe Reef off Mount Maunganui, found more than 50 objects that were most likely to be containers.However, they could also be large rocks, a spokeswoman for environmental clean-up company Braemar Howells told NZ Newswire.These have been spotted in the area surrounding the wreck, Port of Tauranga shipping lanes, and off Matakana and Motiti Islands.A Remote Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROV) will be lowered onto the sea floor from a ship next week.The ROV will record images using an attached video camera and can also tag transmission devices to any identified containers.All objects detected during the sonar scan are at a depth of 30-80 metres.Identified containers will be recovered at a later date.The Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef in October last year, spilling tonnes of oil, containers and debris into the ocean.Some debris has washed ashore as far as away Great Barrier Island, about ...

Mariners transiting North Pacific Ocean should be aware of the debris The Maritime Administration (MARAD) issued an advisory reminding mariners transiting the North Pacific Ocean between Japan and the US West Coast of the debris field resulting from the tsunami on Honshu, Japan in 11 March 2011.Some possible marine debris types include derelict vessels, fishing nets and floats, lumber, cargo containers, and household goods. Because different debris types move with currents and winds differently, the debris may be dispersed over a very broad area.Source: MARAD

Japanese "ghost ship" The U.S. Coast Guard, firing repeated machine-gun blasts from one of its cutters, on Thursday scuttled an abandoned Japanese "ghost ship" that had been washed out to sea near Alaska by last year's devastating tsunami.The derelict fishing vessel Ryou-Un Maru, which posed a threat to other marine traffic, sank at about 6:15 p.m. local time (0215 GMT on Friday), nearly five hours after the Coast Guard first opened fire on the ship, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow told Reuters."It's confirmed," he said. "The vessel has been sunk and is no longer a navigational hazard in the area."The cutter crew sent the Ryou-Un Maru to the ocean floor with a series of blasts from a 25mm machine-gun, firing intermittently on the drifting vessel for about an hour, then pausing as the ship caught fire and listed in the sea. The barrage resumed after a two-hour break, and the boat was underwater about two hours later.The ship's Japanese owner has said it had no plans to salvage the vessel, and Wadlow said it had been slated to be scrapped even before it was swept away by the tsunami. The Ryou-Un Maru was among the 1.5 million tons ...

It will take at least a year or two for the radioactive material to get across the ocean Radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found in tiny sea creatures and ocean water some 186 miles (300 kilometers) off the coast of Japan, revealing the extent of the release and the direction pollutants might take in a future environmental disaster.In some places, the researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) discovered cesium radiation hundreds to thousands of times higher than would be expected naturally, with ocean eddies and larger currents both guiding the "radioactive debris" and concentrating it.With these results, detailed on April 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team estimates it will take at least a year or two for the radioactive material released at Fukushima to get across the Pacific Ocean. And that information is useful when looking at all the other pollutants and debris released as a result of the tsunami that destroyed towns up and down the eastern coast of Japan."We saw a telephone pole," study leader Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist and oceanographer at WHOI, told LiveScience. "There were lots of chemical plants. A lot of stuff ...

Japanese fishing vessel spotted adrift off the west coast of Canada A Japanese fishing vessel swept away by the March 2011 tsunami has been spotted adrift off the west coast of Canada.An aircraft patrolling the seas off British Columbia saw the 15m (50ft) vessel floating 275km (170 miles) from the Haida Gwaii islands on Friday.It is believed to be the first large item from the millions of tonnes of tsunami debris to cross the Pacific.No-one is believed to be on board the ship, registered in Hokkaido, Japan.