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Tsunami ‘ghost ship’ drifting slowly towards north B.C. coast

A rusting "ghost ship," the biggest single piece of flotsam seen so far from last year's Japanese tsunami, is drifting steadily towards the northern B.C. coast with no apparent attempts to stop it.

The 150-foot fishing vessel, intact and relatively undamaged after more than a year at sea, is not expected to make landfall for up to two months.

CTV News reported the ship was spotted by a routine aerial patrol last week about 150 nautical miles off the southern coast of Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands), according to Transport Canada.

Officials have confirmed no one is aboard the ship. It belongs to a Hokkaido squid-fishing company tracked down through the ship's registration number, Discovery News reported.

The owner has been notified of the ship's location and it's being monitored for any signs of pollution. Seafarers are also being warned that the drifting vessel is a potential hazard to navigation.

Surprisingly, there are no plans to rendezvous with the ship and tow it into harbour.

"At this time the vessel is quite far from shore and we are just monitoring to see where it goes," Transport Canada spokesperson Sau Sau Liu told CTV News.

"The ghost ship is probably going to be pretty much worthless — nobody's going to want to have anything to do with it because of the huge costs that are going to be incurred (towing it to shore)," towing expert Paul Gray, senior captain with the Vessel Assist towing company, told the National Post.

The ship is just the biggest piece of a vast wave of tsunami debris heading for the west coast of North America, everything from plastic bottles to fishing gear and the smashed remains of buildings sucked into the sea by the March 11, 2011, disaster.

The Post reported an estimated 20 million tons of debris was swept out to sea by the tsunami, which killed 19,000 people. Scientists predict debris that hasn't broken up and sunk could reach west coast shores by mid-2013. There have been reports of items such as bottles and oyster-farming buoys showing up along the coast already but officials won't confirm they're from the tsunami.