The nuclear fallout stuff sounds a bit shrill and hysteric but it is interesting to see the detritus which is turning up on the other side of the Pacific carried by the ocean currents. Following courtesyof gCaptain.com :
More than a year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, a Japanese fishing boat has been found drifting aimlessly off the coast of British Columbia. The beat up 150-foot trawler was spotted on March 20 by an aircraft while on a routine patrol approximately 150 nautical miles from the southern coast of Canada's Haida Gwaii islands, drifting south. Officials have traced the boat to a squid fishing company in Japan, who had confirmed no one was believed to be on the vessel when the tsunami struck. NOAA, among other organizations, have been warning that marine debris generated by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011 would be making its way across the Pacific, posing navigational hazards to vessels and threatening coastlines, but what, when, and where the debris is expected to wash up has been difficult to predict.
More than a year and thousands of miles later, a soccer ball that had been washed away during the Japan tsunami, turned up on Middleton Island, in the Gulf of Alaska. Local beachcomber David Baxter found the soccer ball as well as a volleyball with Japanese writing on both of them. Remarkably, both owners been identified. The soccer ball's owner, 16 year-old Misaki Murakami lost everything in the 2011 Japan tsunami and is grateful that this object of sentimental value has been found. He received it in 2005 as a gift from his classmates in third grade before moving to a new elementary school, and one of the messages on the ball reads "Good luck, Murakami!!" (or rather "Hang in there, Murakami!!"). David Baxter and his wife Yumi plan to send him the soccer ball. The volleyball was traced to a 19 year-old woman, Shiori Sato, whose home was washed away.