RIO DEL MAR – Brendan Hurley was on the Internet researching tsunami debris the day before he crossed paths with the real thing.

Walking on Rio del Mar beach the morning of June 21, Hurley spotted a blue object near the high water mark. With closer examination, the object had Japanese lettering and was attached to frayed stubs of rope – the second unconfirmed local finding of flotsam from last year’s Japanese disaster.

“I found what appears to be a small net bouy,” Hurley said Wednesday, recalling the encounter. “(The tide) actually threw it right up on the berm.”

Tons of debris raked into the sea after the earthquake and tsunami, which killed tens of thousands of people, is heading toward the West Coast of North

merica.

Already, a ghost fishing vessel turned up off the coast of Canada, and a large floating dock beached in Oregon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is tracking the debris.

In March, a jogger reported finding what appears to be an empty bottle of Japanese dish soap, a household castoff that may have travelled thousand of miles across the sea before coming to rest, coincidentally, on Rio del Mar State Beach as well.

Hurley’s bouy is being kept at his house, but he has reported it to NOAA. Tsunami debris is not considered dangerous.

Aptos resident Paul Lessard found this bottle while running on the beach at Rio del Mar in March. A Japanese-speaking colleague confirmed it is a bottle of Japanese dish soap, but whether it is tsunami debris probably can never be verified. However, experts are revising their debris models after flotsam started showing up in North America sooner than expected. (Paul Lessard/Contributed)

It appears faded on one side, as if it spent a lot of time in the sun. He has not had the lettering translated.

“Right away I pretty much thought a buoy that weathered had to have some from far…”

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