Japan’s tsunami trash is this Sonoma surfer’s treasure
BY CHRIS SMITH/The Press Democrat
Sonoma Coast surfer and rock climber Darren Moffet thinks he may have found one of the first substantial pieces of Japanese tsunami debris to wash up in Northern California.
Darren Moffet and the Kirin beer crate he found on the Sonoma Coast.
It’s a plastic, yellow Kirin beer crate imprinted with Japanese writing.
Moffet didn’t simply pick it up off the sand. He said he used a rope to descend about 40 feet down a rugged seaside cliff a short distance south of Fort Ross.
Internet research has taught him that many such crates were swept away by the tsunami that ravaged the Kirin Brewing Co.’s plant in Sendai City in March of 2011.
Of course, Moffet, who lives near Windsor and works as a boat mechanic and carpenter, can’t be sure the beer crate is tsunami debris. But his gut and research says it is.
“I’m pretty confident I found the real deal,” he said.
As the PD’s Bob Norberg reported last week, beach walkers have begun to watch for Japanese tsunami debris along the Sonoma Coast, but specialists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe it’s too soon for much debris to arrive here.
Moffet may never know for sure if the Kirin crate in his home is a tiny part of the millions of tons of personal possessions and property of all kinds washed into the Pacific by the earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people in Japan 16 months ago.
But he’s satisfied it’s a piece of history.
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Wouldn’t it be great if we had more killer tsunamis, so we can find cool stuff on the beach? I want to see him smiling with some baby shoes, or a a set of dentures.
Hello .I’ve just read this article and I found it very interesting..my name is Darren moffet…I am from napa california..wich is very close to windsor…I also find it amazing we both spell our names the same way…
Get real
Some have washed up on Seaside Beach last weekend.
It would have been an even better find if the beer was still in it.
People need to lighten up.. no one can control mother nature , history is history you wanna see a bigger tragedy in this situation? Research how the japenese government is truly spending the “tsunami relief” money that people all over the world donated.
is the darren moffet that went to SRHS 1987
Thanks for risking your neck to get that thing Darren. Broken pieces from crates wash up on our beaches continually but by the time I pick them up they’re a shadow of their former selves . . .
Better test that thing with a Geiger counter . . .
for the last several months we have been having a glob of debris washing ashore that is identifiably 4 years old. as daren was picking up his crate, we, who happen to be the governmental experts on marine debris and whom have been studying said debris along our coast for 20 years, were picking up and are still picking up water bottels from the beijing olympics removing crate destroyed forensic evedence that we use to date pieces unless it has numbers that date it its useless