Beachcombers on the Olympic coastline reaped a bonanza in late spring when unusual weather conditions littered sands with treasures normally hoarded by the sea.
Treasure hunters found a larger bounty at the ocean’s doorstep and many people said they were finding things that were much older than normal.
When the first reports came in oceanographers didn’t think much of it, but then the phone started ringing off the hook.
“What happened this spring is what I am calling the flotsam event of the century,” said Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Washington scientist known for his ocean current research.
“In our lifetime we are not likely to see an event like this again,” Ebbesmeyer said. “The ocean is telling us how long she can store things.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Sunday Peninsula Daily News.