An expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will lead discussions in Port Angeles and Forks this week on the West Coast arrival of marine debris from the March tsunami in Japan.
Nir Bernea, West Coast regional director for NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, is scheduled to speak Monday in Port Angeles and Wednesday in Forks.
Monday’s Port Angeles presentation will be at 5:45 p.m. at the regular monthly meeting of the Clallam County Marine Resource Committee in the commissioners’ boardroom (160) at the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
On Wednesday, Bernea will address the Forks Chamber of Commerce at a luncheon beginning at noon at JT’s Sweet Stuffs, 80 N. Forks Ave., before speaking at a seminar at 5 p.m. at the Olympic Natural Resources Center at 1455 S. Forks Ave. in Forks.
The University of Washington Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks will host the evening public discussion on the risks posed by the debris and an update on the planning regarding the coordinated response of federal, state and local governments and tribes, said Ellen Matheny, director of education and outreach for the center.
Personnel from the state Emergency Management Department also will speak, and representatives of the state departments of Ecology and Health may also join the discussion, she said.
Both meetings are free and open to the public.
Light dinner snacks will be provided in Forks.
Debris information
In the presentations, Bernea will discuss and answer questions about marine debris making landfall on the West Coast, post-tsunami observations, NOAA’s debris modeling efforts and more recent observations of debris made in the northeast Pacific Ocean
Washington Sea Grant, which helped coordinate the two public events, also is coordinating meetings among federal, state, local and tribal officials on the North Olympic Peninsula to facilitate a regional response to the Japanese tsunami debris, said Ian Miller, coastal hazards specialist with the organization.
The bulk of debris from the tsunami that ravaged northern Japan last March is expected to arrive on Peninsula beaches in 2013, though fishing boat floats from Japan were found on Neah Bay, LaPush and Kalaloch beaches in early December.
The black, 55-gallon floats also have been spotted on Vancouver Island.
NOAA is the lead agency in devising a plan to handle the material as it comes ashore, Penelope Linterman, Emergency Management program coordinator in Clallam County, has said.
“They have seen things like full houses, partial houses, boats, quite a lot of stuff” in the Pacific Ocean, Linterman told Clallam County commissioners earlier this month.
The tsunami was triggered by the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake off the coast of Japan on March 11.
Most of the debris that didn’t sink is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Linterman said there are now several debris fields, since the material has dispersed.
About 25 million tons of debris is expected to make landfall from southern Alaska to California, possibly in volumes large enough to clog ports, Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer said at a presentation on the tsunami debris at Peninsula College on Dec. 13.
Computer models predict some of the material will enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca and move as far east as Port Townsend.
A 12-minute NOAA podcast on when and where the debris will most likely land on the West Coast is at www.tinyurl.com/7qv6wq4.
Debris field information is at www.marinedebris.noaa.gov.
For more information about the Marine Resources Committee, phone Cathy Lear at 360-417-2361 or visit www.clallam.net/ccmrc.
For more information about the Forks event, contact Matheny at 360-374-4556 or 206-919-5632 or email her at ematheny@uw.edu.