By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, April 22 (Reuters) – A soccer ball that
bobbed onto the shore of a remote Alaska island is likely the
first salvageable debris from last year’s Japanese tsunami that
could be returned to its owner, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The ball, found on Alaska’s Middleton Island, bears writing
that identifies its place of origin, said Doug Helton,
operations coordinator for NOAA’s Office of Response and
Restoration, which is tracking debris from the tsunami.
According to a translation provided by Tokyo-based
journalists, the ball is from the Osabe School in the Iwate
Prefecture, an area that was hit by the devastating tidal wave
unleashed March 11 by the magnitude 9 earthquake off Japan’s
northeastern coast, Helton said Sunday.
Beachcombers and cleanup workers in Alaska and the Pacific
Northwest have found debris, including sports equipment, that
was likely set adrift by the tsunami, Helton said. But this
soccer ball stood out because it had identifying information.
The ball was found by David Baxter, a technician at a radar
station on Middleton Island, a remote site in the Gulf of
Alaska.
“We’re working with the guy who found it and the State
Department and the consulate in Seattle to set up a process” to
return the ball, Helton said.
Middleton Island, once the site of a Cold War-era Air Force
station, is located about 75 miles southwest of the Prince
William Sound village of Cordova. The treeless island is largely
uninhabited, except for the radar station, which is used by the
Federal Aviation Administration, and as a seasonal research camp
for federal biologists.
In Alaska, beach cleanup crews on the lookout for tsunami
debris have found mostly floats and buoys from Japanese oyster
farms. It can be difficult to determine whether Japanese items
found washed up are from the tsunami or just part of the normal
marine flotsam that accumulates every year, Helton said.
One other piece of tsunami debris with an owner
positively identified by NOAA was an abandoned fishing vessel
found adrift off Alaska earlier this month and sunk April 5 by
the U.S. Coast Guard.
The 170-foot Ryou-Un Maru, which had been scheduled to be
scrapped by its owner prior to the tsunami, was considered a
navigational hazard after it meandered an estimated 4,500 miles
(7,242 km) in the North Pacific from a port in Hokkaido,
according to the Coast Guard.
Salvage of the ship was considered too costly and difficult,
and the owner did not want the vessel returned, the Coast Guard
and NOAA said. A Coast Guard cutter crew scuttled the vessel in
the Gulf of Alaska.
(Editing by Steve Gorman and Greg McCune; Desking by Stacey
Joyce)
