Swept To Sea

What goes up must come down, and that is indeed a grave situation. For example, satellites that have spent their usefulness to research and suffer the fatigue of failure, may find their way back from whence they came, by plummeting back to Earth and creating a debris field. The Earth's gravity sees to that.

The wind too has a habit of blowing things back at us if we don't take heed of its direction, causing complications. And what is deposited on one side of the Atlantic or the Pacific will eventually, if it does not sink to the bottom of the deep sea, turn up on its opposite side as objects are carried along by the direction of windblown seas and the pattern of waves.

Flotsam and jetsam are tracked by scientists and oceanographers, both by using computer modelling and by measuring ocean currents and observing how many factors impact on the movement of debris.

"People who base their results on satellite-tracking buoys get a slower speed than those of us who track Nike shoes and hockey gloves and airplane wings", explained Curt Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle-based oceanographer.
"We just finished running a simulation with a drifter, a buoy that got lost in the area of the (Japanese) tsunami, and we [found] that the first of the debris would be here now."

The "here" in question is Canada's West Coat. And beachcombers along the west coast of British Columbia have been alerted to report unusual finds. They can report anything unusual they see in the way of floating debris by photographing it and sending it to Mr. Ebbesmeyer at his website at flotsametrics.com. In the interests of scientific explication of unusual phenomena.

The devastating March 11 earthquake and subsequent catastrophic tsunami that struck Japan and which knocked out Fukushima's nuclear plants created a monumental horror of a mess for that island(s) country. Not the least of which was the loss of life, lost to sea, when people of all ages were swept out into the ocean. And with them houses, boats, vehicles, and all manner of objects.

Resulting in a 20-million-tonne ocean-borne debris field, size-equivalent to the spread of the State of California. Some of which is expected to come ashore, tickling the coast of British Columbia, around 2014. Much of it will remain within a "garbage patch", stuck in the North Pacific, where swirling currents surround the seaborne detritus, and keep it there, a prisoner of stasis.

Some, however, comprised of kitchen appliances, computers, fishing boats (even small freighters) will eventually wash ashore. And that eventuality will begin occurring right about now as a bit of an early surprise. A cargo ship near Midway Island gave notice of having spotted an 18-foot vessel in the debris field, see when these objects land they will be difficult to overlook.

Ocean currents will do their part in delivering a goodly portion of the swept-to-sea objects through 2013 and into 2014, it has been estimated. An eerie reminder that what goes out will in time reappear. Somewhere.