PORT ANGELES — After a two-year trans-oceanic journey, earthquake and tsunami debris from Japan is likely to wash ashore on Olympic Peninsula coastal beaches.

The flotsam and jetsam will hit Vancouver Island first, then head south to the Peninsula’s Pacific coastline, then down the rest of the coast to Mexico, said Howard Freeland, a research scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., on Monday.

The detritus will arrive “without doubt,” Freeland said.

It will be carried by the Kuroshio current off Japan in a northerly direction close to the Japanese coast, follow the North Pacific current to Vancouver Island, then travel north to Alaska and south on the California current, Freeland said.

“This stuff can come ashore anywhere from Baja California [Mexico] to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands,” he said.

“Anything that floats that far will certainly come ashore,” he said.

Debris

“It will just come in dribbles. If anything gets dumped off Tokyo, it will show up off our coast.”

An 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake shook Japan on March 11, followed by a tsunami that swept up to six miles inland on Japan’s northeast coast.

Debris from the twin disaster will have to travel about 4,600 miles to reach Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula from Tokyo, floating at an average rate of about 6 miles per day.

That’s about a two-year journey, Freeland said.

Wind currents will play a part in where the floating debris lands.

“If they moved only with currents, then the debris would never come to shore,” he told the Victoria Times Colonist on Sunday.

“Water flows around obstacles, not through them. Things drift ashore by being carried long distances with currents and then being blown onshore by winds.”

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The Times Colonist in Victoria contributed to this report.

Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.