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Gulf of Alaska Keepers collects marine debris from the Northern Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound. With eight boats, 12 seasonal crew memebers and dozens of regular volunteers, they are the largest ongoing marine debris cleanup project on the planet.

For 11 years, Gulf of Alaska Keeper (GoAK) has cleaned marine debris from remote Alaskan coastlines. In the summer of 2015, GoAK organized a large-scale project to collect debris from across the Gulf of Alaska by barge and helicopter. Approximately 440 tons of debris was taken to Seattle, where it will be sorted and disposed or recycled.

A group cleaning up marine debris around Prince William Sound recovered 200 tons of trash from about 12 miles of Alaska’s coastline. Gulf of Alaska Keeper (GoAK) is a nonprofit dedicated to picking up debris around the state. This summer, the crew spent a month at Montague Island and two weeks at Kayak Island.

Returning to Montague Island, site of massive debris wash-up as a result of the 2011 Japan Tsunami. Pallister led a cleanup team in the summer of 2013 and is waiting to find out if the Alaska Legislature will provide more funding to continue the cleanup efforts. 

Chris Pallister gives Alaska Commons a sneak peak at his Anchorage Science Pub lecture. Pallister has been working to remove debris that collects on Alaska's hard to reach coastline, exacerbated by the Japanese tsunami.

Chris Pallister from Gulf Alaska Keeper is this month's presenter, talking about the staggering amounts of debris from the Japanese tsunami deposited on Alaska's hard to reach coastline.

Refrigerators, foam buoys and even ketchup bottles are piling up on Alaska's beaches. It's debris from the devastating Japanese tsunami in the spring of 2011. One of the hardest hit beaches is on Montague Island at the entrance to Prince William Sound. APRN's Annie Feidt visited the beach with a marine debris expert and has this story.

Tsunami debris has already started washing up on shore in Alaska and soon it will be washing up on the shores of Washington state, California, and Canada. John Blackstone reports.

By 2013, it's estimated as much as 1.5 million tons of wreckage from Japan's tsunami could reach the U.S. west coast from Alaska all the way to California. John Blackstone spoke with the president of a local conservation group who predicts the clean-up process could take up to six years.

Debris from the devastating tsunami in Japan is starting to wash ashore in Alaska. John Blackstone reports.

"Evidence of wreckage from the Japanese tsunami is making it all the way across the ocean and is now washing up on beaches in Alaska. John Blackstone reports..".

"This is urethane spray building foam," Chris Pallister, president of the conservation group Gulf of Alaska Keeper, said as he picked through trash on Montague Island, about 200 miles north of Juneau. "We just never got much of that before. But if you walk up and down this beach, you see big chunks.".

"Oceans of Marine Debris: Rescuing Alaska's Shoreline," with Chris Pallister, Gulf of Alaska Keeper. Presented by the Wilderness Institute of the University of Montana. 2012 Theme: Wild Waters of the West.