US Coast Guard fires on tsunami ghost ship
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San Francisco/Juneau (dpa) - The US Coast Guard fired heavy artillery Thursday to sink a fishing trawler set adrift by Japan's tsunami in March 2011, US media reported.
The 60-metre Ryou-un Maru is floating abandoned 300 kilometres off the coast of Alaska. It broke free of moorings in Hachinohe, Japan, during the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that rocked Japan March 11, 2011.
Coast guard spokesman Kip Wadlow told MSNBC that the ghost ship was a danger to shipping traffic.
"There's no crew on board, it doesn't have any light ... and it's in a high volume shipping lane," Wadlow told the broadcaster.
The ship is assumed to have drifted across the Pacific Ocean in the year since the devastating tsunami. It was spotted at the end of last month 200 kilometres from the coast of the western Canadian province of British Columbia, and entered US waters April 1, according to MSNBC.//DPA
