A documentary film that follows a trio of kayakers taking a survey of debris thought to be from the March 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami will return to the North Olympic Peninsula, where it was filmed during the summer of 2012.
“The Ikkatsu Project: The Roadless Coast,” will be shown at 7 p.m. today at the Forks Extension Campus of Peninsula College, and at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Little Theater, at Peninsula College in Port Angeles.
Donations will be accepted as admittance at both showings.
A trailer for the film is available at www.ikkatsuproject.org.
The documentary, filmed on the west Clallam and Jefferson County coastline by three kayakers, Ken Campbell, Steve Weileman and Jason Goldstein, sold out multiple showings at its November world premiere in Tacoma, and there was a single showing in Port Townsend in January.
Windblown items from a large debris field, thought to include as much as 2 million tons of debris washed away from Japan by the tsunami that took nearly 16,000 lives, began to arrive on Clallam County beaches in October 2011.
The most recent notable find was a Japanese dock, spotted in January along the coast between LaPush and the Hoh River, similar to one found on the Oregon coast in 2012.
Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer predicted that the main body of debris will arrive this winter, and on Feb. 15, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said debris from the Japanese tsunami was a “severe marine debris event,” which requires the agency to develop a federal tsunami debris cleanup plan.
Ikkatsu findings
Over the summer of 2012, the Ikkatsu team reported that it found sports balls, plastic toys and what might have been a partially intact Japanese house before it was pounded into wreckage by waves on Cape B Beach, near Neah Bay.
The data-gathering was coordinated with members of a science advisory team, including Ebbesmeyer; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the Coastal Watershed Institute.
Campbell is a writer specializing in the Pacific Northwest outdoors. Goldstein is the team’s cartographer and GIS specialist. Weileman is a documentary filmmaker and photographer.
The Ikkatsu crew is planning a 2013 summer trip to Augustine Island, Alaska, to document debris thought to be from the tsunami on the shores of the active volcanic island in the southwestern Cook Inlet in the Kenai Peninsula, and to film “The Ikkatsu Project: Secrets of Augustine.”
The trio of sea kayakers will begin a survey of debris on beaches there similar to the one they did on the Olympic Peninsula coast and will add a study of plastic ingested by sea birds.
For the bird study, the group is working with Oikonos, an organization that supports coastal marine animal studies and conservation.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
