With about 5,000 miles between the Oregon Coast and Japan, debris from the tsunami faces quite the journey to make it to our shores. Dr. Alan Shanks of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology says some items will be carried all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S., but not anytime soon. "I don't think we'll see anything from the earthquake until, 3 years from now, would be my guess. Be quite a while," Shanks said.
Dr. Shanks says any debris from Japan would have to make its way through multiple currents before arriving in Oregon, traveling at about seven or eight inches per second. He explains, "But they're not straight lines, they're meandering the whole time. So the actual distance the water travels is much farther than 5,000 miles."
Items most likely to make it to the Oregon Coast will be buoyant, things like plastic containers or glass floats from ships.
According to some Oregon architects, other debris like wood will likely become waterlogged, and sink to the ocean floor before it gets too far in the current. Dr. Shanks says floating debris will move the fastest, under the influence of both wind and sea currents.
As for radioactive material, he says based on past studies of atomic weapons, it won't likely make it far underwater, but radiation in the air is a different story.
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