On April 18, Peter Mark was riding his ATV while exploring an isolated beach on Graham Island, which is a part of B.C.’s Haida Gawii Islands. While exploring, Mark came across a large white cube, just below the high tide mark which he described as appearing similar to the back of a moving truck and that had it’s door’s ripped off.
As Mark approached closer, he noticed a rusted up Harley Davidson motorcycle, with rust appearing on the handlebars and the wheels. Surprisingly, the Japanese license plate was still in tact, after seeing this Mark realized that the bike, as well as other items in the cube must have been from the Tsunami in Japan.
Mark also found a few golf clubs, tools, and camping equipment all of which survived and was just laying on the floor without being strapped in, and without even having a door! Mark described the situation as quite an eerie feeling. Mark immediately thought of the owners of the items he found, he wondered whether or not they were okay, and for that fact even alive still. He claims that finding this stuff first hand is shocking and it made him think of what had happened to Japan and to it’s people, and that it kind of hits home quite a bit for him. Mark believes the most important thing to do, is to treat the possessions people find with respect, since they are parts of people’s lives.
The Japanese consulate in Vancouver has the license plate number and is trying to find the owner of the items found by Mark, and that original owners will welcome reuniting with their lost objects according to Hideki Ito, Japan’s consul general in Vancouver. Ito also thinks that Mark’s discoveries are rare, as most heavy items sink to the bottom of the ocean. More than 1.5 million tonnes of tsunami debris is drifting across the Pacific Ocean, towards our B.C. coasts, but not until now has something so large been discovered, as usually only small items like bottles and buoys have washed up.
Check out images below of Mark’s findings from the Tsunami in Japan.
