Gov't increases disaster debris estimate to reach North America

"Marine experts poring over the disaster have said the floating trash adds significantly to the Pacific’s already worrying pollution problem." At least his pollution was not intentional.

Intentional or otherwise, this is a serious problem that hopefully both Japan, US and Canada are prepared to deal with. Fortunately there should be no fears about radiation seeing as how that happened days after the scrap started to float away, but officials on both sides need to prepare the folks on the coastlines about what to do and how to deal with the trash.

I wonder if there are ownership rights involved or would salvage hunters have the right to keep any valuable items found in the debris? I hope that there are procedures being set in place to deal with these types of issues.

More money than the token amounts given by the government so far should be advanced to the communities most likely to be affected as well.

I have seen quite a bit of debris from Japan floating into Cook inlet AK last summer and fall,mostly trash items like platic bottles and Styrofoam containers..I am going to travel by boat along the very remote outer coast this summer and do some beach combing..I am very curious as to just how badly our prestene shoreline will be impacted by this nasty junk.

Because this was a Natural disarster. It up to the people in countries affected to clean this mess up .Japans responsibility is to remove as much as possible of its Ocean floor, recycle and or use Material suitable for land reclaiation in form of Ocean barrier Hills.This could absorb a lot of material from wiped out areas and put it to a constructive use.