University of Hawaii oceanographer Dr. Nikolai Maximenko and his colleague Jan Hafner believe the debris field will reach Midway and Kure atolls in a matter of weeks.
"It will most likely happen this winter or early this spring,” said Maximenko, who spoke at a press conference Tuesday at UH Manoa.
Computer models being used by UH researchers focus on heavier debris carried primarily by ocean currents, not wind.
One recent debris model shows a large plume of purple moving toward Midway sometime next month. However unlike the simulation that depicts patches of solid purple covering the Pacific Ocean, debris from the tsunami is dispersed over a wide area. It would likely take days for someone on a ship to actually spot any remnants of the disaster.
“This tsunami debris is a tragic event and it’s a tragic experiment of nature,” Maximenko said of the computer models currently in use.
The tsunami that devastated parts of Japan is estimated to have generated 25 million tons of debris. Of that, four to eight million tons was sucked back into the ocean. It’s believed one to two million tons remain in the Pacific.
Some of the debris that remains is expected to reach the northwest coast of the U.S. mainland in the next year or two. However researchers say most of the debris will remain offshore, caught up in a spinning gyre known as the ‘Garbage Patch.’
"We estimate 95 to 99 percent of debris will circulate southward and it will end in the convergence zone, the so-called ‘North Pacific Garbage Patch,’" said Maximenko.
Once tsunami debris makes it into the great gyre, some of it will continue to break off and head southwest toward the main Hawaiian Islands. That scenario is most likely happen in 2015 or 2016, four to five years after the tsunami event on March 11 of last year.
Windward coastlines are the most likely to be affected by tsunami debris spinning off from the North Pacific Garbage Patch, for example Kahuku Beach on Oahu and Kamilo Beach on the Big Island.
“This tsunami event must be used to better understand the dynamics of general marine debris and to build up operational systems that efficiently can address this bigger problem,” said Maximenko.
In December of 2011 an expedition sponsored by the University of Hawaii, the Ocean Recovery Alliance and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography deployed eleven buoys and 400 wooden blocks to try and gain a better understanding of how tsunami debris close to Midway may travel.
The wooden blocks advise anyone who finds them to contact the University of Hawaii at Hilo by email or telephone.
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