{"id":8917,"date":"2012-07-04T14:15:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T19:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/?p=8917"},"modified":"2014-06-27T03:32:23","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T03:32:23","slug":"japanese-boat-in-southwest-alaska-may-be-tsunami-debris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/2012\/07\/japanese-boat-in-southwest-alaska-may-be-tsunami-debris\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Boat in Southwest Alaska May be Tsunami Debris"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Metlakatla couple has found what may be the largest item to reach Alaska in the\u00a0\"\"<\/a>wake\u00a0of the March 2011 tsunami \u2014 a 24-foot fiberglass boat.<\/p>\n

Mark Gunyah and his wife, Michele, were beachcombing along the south coast of Annette Island on Saturday. \u00a0\u201dWe came around Moss Point and (Mark) noticed the boat up near the treeline,\u201d said Michele. \u201cIt was upside down and just covered with sea growth. We didn\u2019t think anything of it at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as they continued, she said, they found a number of big buoys, seven in all.\u00a0\u201dWe started thinking: Could this be debris from the tsunami?\u201d Michele said. \u201cSo we went back to the boat with some scrapers and, sure enough, the name was written in Japanese.\u201d\"\"<\/p>\n

Mark Gunyah, who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs maintaining roads on the island, returned with an excavator to right the craft and move it to the water. It floated. With the help of his father, he brought it into Tamgass Harbor, just north of the point. From there it was put on a trailer and brought into Metlakatla, the only town on the island at the southeast tip of Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had one of the men from the Annette Packing Co. Egg Department come take a look at the boat,\u201d Michele said. \u201cBeing as he\u2019s Japanese, he was able to read the lettering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man said the name of the boat was \u201cKaiho-Maru<\/em>,\u201d which he translated as \u201cPleasant Treasure.\u201d He also told the Gunyahs that the boat was \u201cdefinitely from Japan.\u201d He recognized the open Boston Whaler-type design as a popular craft among Japanese fishermen.<\/p>\n

The Gunyahs contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and sent photos of the boat. No one has yet come to Metlakatla to check out the boat in person, Michele said.<\/p>\n

Last month a five-member team from NOAA spent 10 days specifically searching for tsunami debris on the Alaska coast between Ketchikan, just north of Annette Island, and Juneau. They found a number of black buoys similar to those found by the Gunyahs but could not say if those items were directly related to the tsunami. Michele described them as \u201cvery hard plastic\u201d and unlike the floats used by fishermen in her part of Alaska.<\/p>\n

The NOAA team reported finding no greater density of marine debris last month than in 2008, when a previous inspection was conducted.<\/p>\n

Confirmed flotsam from the disaster has been found from Middleton Island, in the Gulf of Alaska \u2014 a child\u2019s soccer ball \u2014 to Oregon, where a 160-ton floating dock made landfall after floating across the Pacific Ocean. On Sunday Oregon set up 32 collection sites along its coast to receive debris expected to come ashore.<\/p>\n

An abundance of debris reported to be associated with the tsunami has been reported around Yakutat and in British Columbia. The surge of unmarked debris hitting the north shores of Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, has included \u201ccountless Styrofoam pieces,\u201d bottles, propane tanks and gas tanks, some with the fuel still in them. The CBC reports that part of the island \u201clooks like a landfill.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Gunyahs\u2019 discovery, it is now parked at a road equipment shop some distance from Metlakatla. \u201cWe live downtown and thought it would be better to keep it out the road,\u201d Michele said. \u201cIt\u2019s been scraped and pressure washed, but it still smells pretty bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she added, her husband told her that, if it gets cleaned up enough by Wednesday, he\u2019ll roll it on a trailer in the town\u2019s Fourth of July parade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see if that happens,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s really stinky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy of\u00a0www.adn.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Metlakatla couple has found what may be the largest item to reach Alaska in the\u00a0wake\u00a0of the March 2011 tsunami \u2014 a 24-foot fiberglass boat. Mark Gunyah and his wife, Michele, were beachcombing along the south coast of Annette Island on Saturday. \u00a0\u201dWe came around Moss Point and (Mark) noticed the boat up near the treeline,\u201d said Michele. \u201cIt was upside down and just covered with sea growth. We didn\u2019t think anything of it at first.\u201d But as they continued, she said, they found a number of big buoys, seven in all.\u00a0\u201dWe started thinking: Could this be debris from the tsunami?\u201d Michele said. \u201cSo we went back to the boat with some scrapers and, sure enough, the name was written in Japanese.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}