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This year, the group cleaned a small portion of coastline on two islands south of Anchorage. The effort netted about 200 tons of trash like plastic water bottles and commercial fishing gear. Workers also continue to find debris like refrigerators, small appliances and foam building material from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

One by one, people overturned massive, white, heavy-duty bags at the Port of Anchorage Saturday afternoon, spilling out their contents: a hodgepodge of debris that had found its way into the ocean, eventually landing on Alaska's remote coastlines...

There’s a long list of nonprofit, federal, and academic institutions working on the issue, including Gulf of Alaska Keeper, which says it has removed more than one million pounds of plastic from Alaska’s waters in the last 10 years…

The scope of plastic pollution is difficult to convey. It exists on every shoreline of every oceanfront country in the world to some degree. Alaska’s rugged yet fragile coastlines are particularly vulnerable because of the dynamics of the Pacific Ocean’s circulation patterns.

Tons of trash has been carried by ocean currents to Montague Island, located at the entrance to Prince William Sound, and over 50 percent of that debris is from Japan’s March 2011 tsunami.

Some northern Gulf of Alaska shorelines hold up to 30 tons of plastic marine debris per mile with half of that being tsunami debris. With less than 500 miles of Gulf of Alaska shoreline cleaned to date, the cleanup response has only started.

Though the Bay is mirror perfect, word is that there’s a menacing surge running over at Gore Point, where we need to go to land. We know this because Chris Pallaster, executive director of an organization called the Gulf of Alaska Keeper, has flown from Homer to Gore Point by float plane.

Trash from Japan's huge 2011 earthquake and tsunami is littering coastal beaches, including Alaska, but only limited cleanup efforts are gearing up during the favorable summer weather season.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — After months of waiting, the State of Alaska and four other west coast states will soon receive $250,000 to help with tsunami relief.

The beaches of Alaska are piled with debris from the tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, but restoration to their once pristine condition has slowed, as funding remains scarce.

A main concern of environmentalists and officials is that the lightweight specks, which have been broken down by storms and waves, will harm small animals. They could choke or die slowly from malnutrition if pieces block their intestinal system, officials say.

The group has been cleaning up marine debris that washes onto Alaska’s shores for 11 years. And when the tsunami debris began arriving last spring, their job got a whole lot harder.

Twelve volunteers from both CACS and GoAK organizations recently returned from a remote beach on the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, Gore Point. The cleanup yielded over 90 cubic yards of debris, which is enough to fill an entire school bus full of flotsam. On roughly two miles of coastline over 4,000 pounds of debris was collected.

Chris Pallister, GoAK president, developed a system to count, weigh and catalog debris into about 140 categories. Working with partner Mika Zwollo, a biology professor at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., he divided the east beach into 100-foot sectors, cataloging by sector.

Of course, what worries researchers more is that the dock may just be the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, in regard to what else might wash ashore. “I think that the dock is a forerunner of all the heavier stuff that's coming later, and amongst that heavier stuff are going to be a lot of drums full of chemicals that we won't be able to identify,” says Chris Pallister, president of the non-profit Gulf of Alaska Keeper

More debris is hitting Alaskan beaches sooner than expected according to the manager of the largest pre-tsunami beach cleanup program in the state.

The Japanese government estimates that 1.5 million tons of debris is floating in the ocean from the catastrophe. Some experts in the United States think the bulk of that trash will never reach shore, while others fear a massive, slowly-unfolding environmental disaster.

As the heavier debris from the March 2011 tsunami that struck Japan makes its way across the Pacific Ocean, scientists warn of the ecological threat of toxic, chemical debris headed towards North America's western coast.

A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimate stated that 1.5 million tons of tsunami-generated debris will hit the North American west coast. That translates into 30 billion pounds. If only 1% of that reaches Alaska's shores, 30 million pounds of largely plastic and toxic debris will flood our sensitive inter-tidal ecosystem. Our predictions are that Alaska will receive closer to 15 to 20% of the debris over a period of years.

The foam comes from the walls of buildings that were smashed to splinters by the wall of water that slammed into Japan's northeastern coast after the March 2011 earthquake that left nearly 16,000 known dead. The wreckage was swept out to sea when the wave receded and has drifted 4,000 miles across the northern Pacific in the 14 months since then.

Debris from the Japanese tsunami has begun to wash ashore along Alaska's outer beaches to a dramatic extent -- delivering floats, barrels, gunk plus one errant soccer ball recovered on Middleton Island, according to Facebook posts, news reports and eyewitness accounts from around the region.

It’s even worse on Montague Island, according to Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit group which cleans up beaches each spring and summer. “It’s a staggering mess,” he said during a visit to Kayak Island last Friday, “the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this stuff a long time.”

Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit organization that estimates it has cleared nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic debris from Alaskan coasts over the past 10 years, is reporting “tons” of what it believes is likely tsunami debris washing up on the coasts of the Kayak and Montague islands. Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, told Alaska’s KTUU TV that ““It’s a staggering mess […] the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this stuff a long time.”

Off Gore Point, where tide rips collide, the rolling swells rear up and steepen into whitecaps. Quiet with concentration, Chris Pallister decelerates from 15 knots to 8, strains to peer through a windshield blurry with spray, tightens his grip on the wheel and, like a skier negotiating moguls, coaxes his home-built boat…