Beachcombers busy with a bevy of debris

LONG BEACH (Wash.) PENINSULA — By 4 a.m. one morning last week, a trickle of beachcombers were already making a circuit on the beach, first north to Oysterville, and then all the way south to Beard’s Hollow.

It was easy to tell what they were doing. Unlike clammers, who make a beeline for a favorite spot then park, the beachcombers drove slowly with their high beams on. It was still too dark to make out any details in the early blue light, but they braked whenever they came to a promising cluster of shadowy shapes on the tide line.

About two weeks ago, an unprecedented influx of tangled seaweed, rope, foam, and household garbage began washing in with the high tide.

Mixed in with the toothpaste tubes, tea bottles and barnacle-encrusted shower shoes were treasures, such as glass floats. As word spread, the number of people cruising the beach after high tide – even in the dead of night – quickly increased.

Locals quickly took notice – One woman posted a picture of a tide line covered with detritus.

“I’ve never seen the beach so littered before!” She remarked.

Debris changes over time

The year after the March 2011 quake and subsequent tsunami, thousands of chunks of Styrofoam skimmed across the surface of the ocean, pushed by the wind like a fleet of tiny ships.

The experts predicted that these bits of flotsam were harbingers of an onslaught of Japanese debris that would carpet Washington shores with everything from docks to dolls to sneakers filled with foot-bones, but the onslaught never arrived.

Then in late May, the quantity of Asian debris suddenly began to increase, for reasons that aren’t totally clear yet.

The nature of the debris has changed too.

In May alone, at least seven boats washed up in Washington, with more boats landing on the peninsula than anywhere else, according to Linda Kent, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Ecology. The boats came as part of a wave of heavier items that are often encumbered by colonies of hitchhiking marine life, and moved “more by currents, and less by wind.”

“We have been seeing more debris,” Kent said last week. “What we’re seeing right now is more of that low-floating debris.”

Kent said it’s difficult to tell how much of this is debris from Fukushima Prefecture, the region of East Japan where the catastrophe was centered.

Researchers maintain that most of the debris sank, and the remaining debris is mixed in with a much larger quantity of trash that has been floating in the Pacific for many years. But it is clear to locals that we are seeing more debris than ever before.

In his time as a tow-truck driver with Hill Autobody & Towing, Long Beach resident Tye Caldwell and his boss George Hill have hauled a lot of strange things off the beach – giant stumps, water-logged cars, bloated whale carcasses. Lately, they’ve been getting called to bring in the boats. One evening last week, he was called to the Cranberry Road beach approach to pick up a remarkable-looking vessel. After countless months and miles drifting in Pacific Rim currents, the 12-foot boat was completely covered in a slimy, writhing mass of thousands of goose-neck barnacles that made it resemble Cthulhu, the famously tentacled green sea-monster from H.P. Lovecraft’s classic horror stories. Captivated by the at the dangling masses of tubules – and the colony of tiny crabs that plopped onto the sand as Caldwell winched the boat onto his truck – a group of onlookers snapped photographs.

Because Caldwell spends so much time driving the beach, he’s had plenty of opportunity to figure out the best times and places for finding the Japanese glass floats that beachcombers treasure. On the morning he took a Chinook Observer reporter to look for floats last week, there were plenty of fast food containers and household items. There was also potential evidence of the tragedy – Japanese seafood processing equipment, a Japanese worker’s waterproof boot. That morning, there were no floats. According to Caldwell, an hour after high tide, it was already too late – more eager beachcombers had probably already harvested everything worth taking.

Recently, George Hill found perhaps the most significant proof that artifacts from the disaster are arriving on our shores: A white plastic hard hat that once belonged to a member of a marine rescue organization in Fukushima.

Helmet hits home

Two or three weeks ago, he was driving north of Oysterville, when he spied a cluster of interesting debris. The hard hat as nestled in with the baskets. Like most of the items that come from the Pacific Rim, it was filled with sea life.

“I thought it was a plastic float when I first saw it. It had a lot of stuff in it,” Hill said. He set it out to dry in the sun, and sent a photograph to a Japanese-speaking acquaintance. Since then, two professors from Portland State University’s Japanese Department have confirmed what Hill’s acquaintance said. The helmet comes from an organization called “Marine Rescue Japan,” which performs the same type of water rescue tasks that U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers perform here.

Last week, professors Patricia Wetzel and Emiko Konomi said the hard hat had come from Hisanohama, a district of Iwaki City, where some of the highest waves hit.

The hat had no identifying information, so it can’t be reunited with a Japanese family. But it still struck a chord with Hill. After learning where the hat came from, he said he spent a couple of hours researching, and watching videos of the terrifying moments when the tsunami inundated Iwaki.

Hill said that the hard hat serves as a poignant reminder that the true magnitude of the disaster can’t be quantified in Hisanohama, where the nuclear contamination caused people to lose their fishing livelihoods, as well as their loved ones.

“What hit me was that 20,000 people lost their lives, but every one of them had so many extended family members that are still suffering from that. How do you replace losing an entire family?” Hill said.

“I’ve got to tell you that hat that I found – the city that it came from is gone.”