Coast Guard mystified as boat lost in March 11 tsunami found on other side of Japan
A sport fishing boat swept away from a port in Iwate Prefecture is pictured in the port of Kasumi in Kami, Hyogo Prefecture, on Dec. 31. (Mainichi)KAMI, Hyogo -- A small fishing boat swept away from its home port in Iwate Prefecture by the March 11 tsunami was discovered here -- all the way on the other side of Japan's largest island of Honshu -- on Dec. 31.
According to the local Japan Coast Guard (JCG) office, a patrol vessel towed the 6-meter-long sport fishing boat to the nearby port of Kasumi, where it was confirmed it had gone missing from the Kirikiri fishing port in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, on March 11. The boat's owner, 63-year-old Otsuchi resident Choichi Nozaki, was killed in the tsunami.
Choichi's brother and Otsuchi Municipal Assembly member Shigeta Nozaki, 68, told the Mainichi the boat "was one my brother used for his fishing hobby. I've often heard of boats swept from the Kirikiri port showing up in Hokkaido, but I was very surprised that my brother's boat was found off the Sanin region (along the Sea of Japan)."
The appearance of the boat is apparently very unlikely indeed, as the Kuroshio Current in the Pacific and the Tsushima Current, the Kuroshio's Sea of Japan branch, flow south to north along Japan's coasts.
"In the Sanin region, we get a lot of flotsam from South Korea and Kyushu, but we have no idea how this boat could get here all the way from the Tohoku region's Pacific coast," the local JCG office commented.
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) January 2, 2012
Monday, 2 January 2012
Coast Guard mystified as boat lost in March 11 tsunami found on other side of Japan - The Mainichi Daily News
via mdn.mainichi.jp
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