Join the Pacific Gyre Japan Tsunami Debri research Boat

     Image via Wikipedia The North Pacific Gyre

     a clockwise-swirling vortex of ocean currents

     comprising most of the northern Pacific Ocean

The 5 gyres team are planning a voyage to do research on the  Japan Debri field here's your chance to get on board and help. Scientists, educators and eco-adventurers are being offered the unprecedented opportunity to join a research expedition through the North Pacific Ocean littered with debris generated by the Japan tsunami of March 2011. Rarely is such a monumental amount of material, tens of thousands of tons including cars, entire homes and boats, simultaneously thrust into the sea from a single location.

The 5 Gyres Institute and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (Algalita) have organized this expedition in collaboration with Pangaea Explorations to offer a 7,000-mile, high-seas voyage aboard the Sea Dragon sailing vessel from May 1 through July 1, 2012. 

The expedition’s first leg will sail from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands through the area of the North Pacific Gyre commonly referred to as the “Western Garbage Patch” where little research has been conducted on plastic pollution.  The trip’s second leg will travel due east from Japan to Hawaii through the gyre, a vast vortex of ocean currents where plastic debris accumulates, to cross the “Japan Tsunami Debris Field.” Of great interest to the  researchers is how fast the plastic trash is traveling across the gyre, how quickly or slowly it is decomposing, how rapidly marine life is colonizing on it, and whether it is transporting invasive species.

 This graphic depicts the predicted location of the Japan debris field as it swirls towards the U.S. West Coast. Scientists predict the first bits of rubbish will wash up in a year's time In three years' time the debris field will have reached the U.S. West Coast and will then turn toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, circulating in what is known as the North Pacific gyre.Predictions from Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle-based oceanographer, said he expected bits of houses, whole boats and even feet still in sneakers, to wash up on the U.S. West Coast Read more: 

Related articles

• Expedition set to explore tsunami ocean debris field (summitcountyvoice.com)
• Researchers alarmed by size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (vancouversun.com)
• Tracking the Debris From Japan's Tsunami (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Tsunami Debris Disaster Tourism (discardstudies.wordpress.com)
• 'Frightening' amount of plastic floating in North Pacific Gyre (theprovince.com)