Tsunami-Borne Detritus

"I found more debris in ten minutes than I have in four years ... and it's all Japanese in origin" - Perry Schmunk, Mayor of Tofino, British Columbia.

It is a bizarre phenomenon, but an entirely expected one, that a huge floating island of all manner of debris - that the March 2011 earthquake of such unbelievably 9.0-on-the-Richter-scale tremendous force hit Japan, causing a huge tsunami to result, washing out to sea tens of thousands of hapless Japanese, their houses, vehicles, boats, farm equipment and more - has been drifting inexorably toward the west coast of North America.

Shipping containers, large fishing vessels, household appliances, and all manner of detritus from that immense catastrophe have already been sighted, and advance warning given of their eventual arrival. The vanguard of the detritus-field has arrived. Small, personal, human-touched items have been retrieved; toothbrushes, children's socks. Roughly twenty thousand people had been washed out to sea.

And alongside the people, an estimated two hundred thousand buildings of all descriptions. Difficult to absorb, to visualize, to imagine. Three months ago, a Russian ship sailed through tsunami-derived detritus near the Midway islands, seeing furniture, appliances, and a 20-foot fishing boat from Fukushima, where five nuclear reactors had been disabled by the tsunami, and three went into meltdown.

The scope of the tragedy and the complications that arose from the evacuation of entire villages, farm animals and companion pets left to fend for themselves, while evacuees faced the reality that their life treasures, their occupations, their possessions, their futures were all in the past, as the area they evacuated had become inhabitable. They, though were alive, unlike the twenty thousand washed out into the vast, roiling ocean.

People have been finding lumber; boards, planks, entire roofing trusses, stamped with Japanese export stamps, along Tofino's beaches. The eerie plunder of the sea's fury coming to rest far from its source, carrying with it untold stories of misery, fear and disaster. And more, much more to come. There will eventually be so much accumulated detritus that a gigantic clean-up operation will be required.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii laid claim to 20 million tonnes of debris having been washed out to sea by the effects of the tsunami. Their calculations convinced them that the floating island of debris would reach North America some time in 2013. Obviously, what has begun to come ashore is the gentle vanguard of an eventual seaborne invasion.

That, in and of itself, sadly poignant, will become another kind of catastrophic event requiring attention.