Posted on 03/27/2012 7:16:37 PM PDT by Rabin
As an eerie reminder of the tragedy that befell the Japanese people more than 12 months ago, a 150-foot Japanese fishing boat has been spotted on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, floating aimlessly off the coast of the Haida Gwaii islands, British Columbia.
In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11, 2011, up to 8 million tons of wreckage was washed out to sea -- 2 million of which is thought to still be floating...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
R.
Marketing opportunity for a FANTASTIC ad for the ship builders.
those were expensive vessels - gotta be a salvage opp. Hope there are no emaciated dead people on board - ok ghost ship it may be.
I have sailed from Panama to Guam, and Guam to California. It does not surprise me at all that a 150’ ship could drift that far unnoticed. Imagine a wall in a big room. Put a pin hole in the wall. That is the area of the horizon on the Pacific that you can see from your own vessel.
Unless your current “pinhole” literally rubs up agains another “pinhole” on that wall, the two “pinholes” will never be aware of one another, even if they passed within 1/8” of each other.
It’s almost impossible to comprehend the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Ships are no more than the micro-dot at the center of the pinhole. The pinhole is the entire horizon to horizon span they can see. The rest is invisible, which is about 99.9999999999999% of a damn large area. Even patrol aircraft can only see a tiny bit of it from the cockpit.
From 30,000 feet, a passing jetliner will completely miss and not notice a drifting 150 footer. It’s not transmitting a distress signal, so there is nothing about it that will catch the eye of a random pilot, if any pilot ever even saw the ship. And nobody was searching for the ship, so patrol aircraft are a moot point.
Until it came into coastal waters, with the much greater number of local vessels, it was unlikely to ever be spotted, and might have circled the Pacific for decades.
It's a pretty big area; there are not eyes on the the whole area, all the time.
Right. Sailed across Pacific several times. Rarely see lights of passing ship at night even in shipping lane.
Then you are the man to answer this.
^hat shop looks like it’s been rotting in a shipyard for a decade. Would a year at sea unmaintained do that kinda damage or would it be likely it was a POS to begin with and the owners just saved the cost of scrapping it?
I haZ a dumb on such things ;)
Certainly good testimony for the efficacy of the batteries and the bilge pumps they power.
Is that rust or blood over the starboard bow?
Phew...hope there weren’t any fish in that hold.
I’d love to see the Discovery Channel board this and make a documentary on this. It would be interesting to see what they find?
*ghost ship ping*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PetptDbHSoU
Kyo Sakamoto ~ Sukiaki
Yes, that ship looks as if had not been maintained very well before the tsunami. I suspect the owner did not try very hard to find it after the storm.
I wonder if this is anywhere near the area where tennis shoes containing the remains of feet are washing up??
The problem with salvaging this ship is, 15 minutes after finishing the salvage company will want to salvage another one.
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