It looks like the scene from a Hollywood blockbuster.
A lone ship, abandoned and adrift on an ocean.
It’s fired on–then on fire–until it sinks below the surface and never comes up again.
This time, the whole thing was real. I first wrote about this Japanese Tsunami Ghost Ship last week. But finally in U.S. waters over the weekend and adrift in a busy shipping channel, the U.S. Coast Guard said it was too dangerous to leave the shift adrift. Especially because at night it has no lights.
So on Thursday April 6, 2012, the crew on Coast Guard Cutter Anacapa fired ammunition at the vessel. At first in didn’t sink. So after waiting about two hours, the Anacapa fired more ammunition and not much later the Japanese fishing vessel sank in 6,000′ of water about 180 miles off the coast of Alaska.
The Japanese fishing vessel Ryou-Un Maru was set to be scrapped when the Japan Mega-quake and Tsunami hit in 2011. Those waves washed this vessel out to sea. Because it is basically stripped down, it’s unusually light and rides extra high on the water so winds help it make extra fast time across the Pacific Ocean. At least that’s the theory for now.
There’s still quite a bit of debate about when the majority of the Japanese Tsunami debris will reach the west coast of the United States. But some small items–and now this suddenly appearing tsunami ghost ship–have made the journey in almost exactly one year. Amazing. And it shows us how much we still have to learn about ocean currents and water happens where no one lives or stays.
The Pacific Ocean remains a huge mystery!
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