e
Bad News: 1.5 Million Tons of Floating Japanese Tsunami Garbage is Headed for North America--and It's Got Hitchhikers
In the past two years, residents of North America's west coast have received some "gifts": Soccer balls, wooden flooring and even entire boats have washed ashore. Amazingly, this stuff traveled all the way, untended, from Japan.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the tsunami of March 2011 washed some five million tons of Japanese debris into the Pacific Ocean. Seventy percent of that debris is estimated to have sunk to the ocean floor around Japan, but the other 30% was buoyant enough to keep going. And yes, some of it has washed up on American shores, and if the experts are to be believed, there is more to come.
Earlier reports have been panicky. In September, NOAA released this graphic based on a computer simulation:
That shows a field of garbage larger than Texas, and about two times the area of Japan itself, on a collision course with California. In an update released just this week, however, NOAA points out that that is not a solid mass of debris:
...Whatever debris remains floating is very spread out. It is spread out so much that you could fly a plane over the Pacific Ocean and not see any debris since it is spread over a huge area, and most of the debris is small, hard-to-see objects.
We don't care if this island of garbage is contiguous or not; what's distressing is that there is 1.5 million tons of trash headed our way. What's more distressing, however, is this:
That's a 4x4 Japanese plastic bin spotted off the coast of Hawaii, and as you can see, the bottom has become encrusted with barnacles along its journey. The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory reports that it's a common species of barnacle. But as we saw in the last post, when certain species travel a long ways from home, they can cause problems. The barnacles may not be cause for concern, but what's stuck to a Japanese dock that washed up on Oregon shores is. According to John Chapman of Oregon State University's Marine Science Center,
"...We're finding that all kinds of Japanese organisms are growing on the debris...We've found over 165 non-native species so far," he added. "One type of insect, and almost all the others are marine organisms... we found the European blue mussel, which was introduced to Asia long ago, and then it grew on a lot of these things that are coming across the Pacific... we'd never seen it here, and we don't particularly want it here," he said, arguing that it could be "invasive" and displace current marine life.
Many other creatures have been found, too. "In the debris we found the Northeastern sea star... as well as a type of brown algae that's used to make miso soup. We'd never seen it here before."
The ecological side effects of these new species reaching American shores has yet to be projected, as we don't yet know the sum total of what's headed our way. But if the zebra mussel problem is any indication, the side effects probably won't be pleasant.
One spot of bright news: NOAA reports that "Radiation experts agree that it is highly unlikely that any tsunami-generated marine debris will hold harmful levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear emergency. Some debris [on the] West Coast has been tested by the states, including items known to be from the tsunami, and no radioactive contamination above normal was found." Guess we should count our blessings.
-
oFavorite This
-
Q11Comment
Directory Company Profiles
Core77
Industrial Design
Resources
Industrial Design
Resources
-
Core77 Directory
Find the Best Industrial Design CompaniesGo -
Bruce Mau DesignBMD is a multidisciplinary brand and design studio. At BMD, we are here to move organizations forwar...
-
Project Duo
Project Duo brings proven innovation and key assets to clients of all sizes. From mom and pop busine...
-
Studio Redeye, LLC.
Our goal as a full service industrial design studio is to create designs that emotionally connect wi...
-
Brainchild Engineering
Brainchild Engineering, based in Northville MI, is a product development and engineering company ded...
-
Springtime design
Springtime is a creative force that develops exciting, sustainable and paradigm-shifting products, b...
-
andesignlab
ANDESIGN is an industrial design consultancy based in Orange County California and Austin Texas. AN...
-
Open Design
We partner with teams to deliver fresh thinking and award winning products for passionate audiences....
K
{Welcome
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
K
Reset Password
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.
Comments
Because we are on the subject of invasive species I will use the Chinese Carp as an example. This fish as devastated river eco-systems from the southern United States all the way north to Chicago and is now threatening the Great Lakes. Though there are measures that have been put in place already to try and stop them they are not permanent and they are not completely effective. There have been Chinese Carp found in Lake Michigan already, we are lucky because at this point they have not reached a reproductive population within the lake.
There is a fierce debate over what should be done to stop them from getting into the lakes, some go as far as proposing to completely separate Lake Michigan and the Chicago River.
Where in the article does it say anything, anything at all, about how the big bad energy companies are even remotely responsible for the tsunami?
Deepwater / BP Oil disaster, absolutely. BP was entirely responsible for that mess and they should be on the hook for the cleanup.
But this is about a natural disaster doing what natural disasters do... occur naturally and make a mess.
So sick of energy companies raking in millions of dollars and when something goes wrong they can just walk away from it. They need to be held accountable in every way possible!