THIS ARTICLE HAS been revised to reflect the following correction:
CORRECTION: Feb. 29, 2012: : An article on Monday, Feb. 27, incorrectly referred to a beached toothpaste tube as having Japanese markings. The markings were not Japanese.
Beachcombers on Washington state’s coastal beaches are finding items with oriental markings and asking the question, “Is this tsunami debris?”
In December, oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham announced they had identified the first tsunami debris from the March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake and tsunami to arrive on U.S. shores at a Peninsula College public lecture in Port Angeles.
Since then, people who visit beaches are paying attention to what they find on beaches and what kind of markings it has.
Two weeks ago, Wendy Valentine, 44, of Olympia, and her husband found an empty tube of Colgate toothpaste on the Long Beach Peninsula in southern Pacific County. It bore oriental language characters.
“When I e-mailed Dr. Ebbesmeyer, he said it was possible that it came from the tsunami but would be unable to prove it,” Valentine said.
“Just the thought that it might be from the tsunami made it more real.”
But was it from the tsunami, or was it just trash? (It was later determined that the characters on the toothpaste tube were not Japanese.)
Earlier this month, the Japanese Consulate in Seattle confirmed that a large black plastic float found near Neah Bay last fall is a Japanese-manufactured item used in shellfish farming and likely came from the area hit by the tsunami.
However, they could not confirm whether it was torn from its shellfish bed by the tsunami or had broken loose because before that time.
The float arrived in late October or early November, between two beach cleanup events held by Surfrider International on a Makah-owned, controlled access beach near Neah Bay.
It came ashore exactly where and when Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham’s model predicted the first tsunami-related items should start arriving.
Their model showed that lightweight items with a lot of surface area exposed to the wind, such as the big black float, can travel as fast as 20 miles per day and should start arriving a year before the heavier, ocean current-borne debris.
Ebbesmeyer, who continues to track the debris, said Tuesday he is preparing a guide to help beachcombers recognize the difference between trash and tsunami debris.
When it is ready, it will be posted at his website, at http://beachcombersalert.blogspot.com.
The people who found the first float last fall were members of Surfrider International, a group of surfers, paddleboarders and kayakers interested in keeping beaches and coastal waters clean.
The longtime Peninsula surfers said they immediately recognized the floats were unique after their 30 years of cleaning beaches in the area.
Arnold Schouten of Port Angeles has been cleaning North Olympic Peninsula beaches for more than two decades and is a member of Surfriders.
At least a half-dozen nearly identical black floats were found in the Neah Bay and LaPush areas in November and December.
“The way they’re coming, all of a sudden, is a better indicator that they are following Ebbesmeyer’s model,” Schouten said.
The first things beachcombers should look for — items that have a high probability as having come from the Japanese tsunami — are large floats, small boats and anything else with a high profile above the water that can be caught by the wind, he said.
Right now, the vast majority of the items found on the beaches are just trash from the Japanese fishing fleet that harvests the cold waters of the Northern Pacific, or simple beach trash that floated away from Japan years ago and finally has found its way to the Eastern Pacific.
Over the years, the Olympic Peninsula chapter of Surfrider Foundation have collected hundreds of crab pot floats, round black fishing floats and trash from Asia, Schouten said.
Recently, a pile of lumber with Asian writing was found on an area beach, but it was raw, unused lumber that probably fell off of a cargo ship, he said.
Small, round black floats with two eyes are commonly used by the fishing fleets and have been found on area beaches for years, he said.
Lumber from the tsunami, which is expected to begin arriving on the Washington coast in 2013, will likely have attached house parts, like wiring, roofing shingles or other markers that show it was torn from a larger structure.
The debris field has been broken up by wave and storm action and is no longer forming large rafts of debris that was seen in the weeks after the tsunami.
Those early debris fields included entire houses, boats, cars and hundreds of black floats like those found on area beaches.
Emergency crews plucked human and animal survivors from floating rooftops in the week following the tsunami.
Dr. Tom Locke, Public Health Officer for Clallam and Jefferson counties, told the Clallam County Board of Health last week that his office is tracking tsunami debris, “especially for the public health ramifications.
He said that solid waste may arrive in volumes, “and probably the most tragic thing we might see is actual human remains wash up on shores over the next year.”
He referred to the discoveries of human feet in tennis shoes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and surrounding areas.
“That’s a phenomenon we’ve seen in the Straits is that human remains in knotted tennis shoes can persist for years in the marine environment,” he said.
“So we’re preparing for that.”
________
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
