“Nothing could have prepared Ivan Macfadyen for the devastation all around him as he sailed the Pacific.”
That’s the first line of an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, published in Sydney, Australia, earlier this week (Oct. 18, 2013). The article with the ominous title, “The Ocean Is Broken,” by writer Greg Ray describes how Ivan Macfadyen, a yachtsman from Newcastle, had seen the ocean teaming with life when he sailed from Melbourne to Osaka and from Osaka to San Francisco in 2004. When Macfadyen repeated the journey in March and April of this year, ‘There were no fish, no birds, in fact there was hardly a sign of life,” Ray wrote.
Macfadyen also noticed that the ocean was strewn with debris from the devastating tsunami that hit Northern Japan in March 2011. The whole sad tale is well worth reading.
For more information on marine debris from the Japan tsunami see the work of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program.