Authorities inspect the metal sphere that washed up on a Japanese beach last week. Photo / @PopMovieTv, Twitter
Authorities inspect the metal sphere that washed up on a Japanese beach last week. Photo / @PopMovieTv, Twitter
Not every unidentified spherical object in sight is a spying device, people.
Case in point: a giant metal ball that washed up on a Japanese beach, drawing suspicion from authorities and wonder from the public this week.
After the rusty yellowish sphere, about the size of a wreckingball, drifted ashore in Hamamatsu, Japan, officials in helmets and hazmat suits cordoned off the area, even planting a traffic cone on the sand to ward people off. That led to speculation that it might be an old seaborne mine or some sort of instrument of espionage.
But after X-raying it, police confirmed that it was not explosive. It was just a large, spherical piece of scrap metal — a reminder that the oceans, like the skies, are full of mystery and trash.
“The ball is going to be scrapped eventually,” Hiroyuki Yagi, an official at Shizuoka Prefecture’s River and Coastal Management Bureau, said on Friday, adding that authorities had assigned a local company to hold on to it for now.
By then, it was far too late to stop the online mill of rumours (and jokes). For days, television footage of helmeted officials peering and prodding at the sphere had led to comments about a possible unidentified floating object, or perhaps an egg produced by something large, lurking far below.
Mostly, though, the commentary reflected geopolitical tensions. Last weekend, a North Korean missile landed in waters west of Japan, and earlier this month a Chinese spy balloon over the United States set off a diplomatic crisis and a spate of flying-object sightings. The end result, after the footage from the beach appeared online, was a lot of remarks about spy buoys.
It was, of course, a non-spying buoy, experts said.
“It’s just a normal buoy,” said Uwe Send, an oceanographer with the University of San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Send said such buoys were widely available for purchase online and could be seen on Pinterest. Oceanographers use different types of buoys for many kinds of research and normally paint them in bright colours, with a name or phone number, often attaching a light or beacon to help keep track of the expensive equipment attached to them.
Buoys resembling the one found in Japan are typically made of steel and are often used for mooring ships in harbours or at sea. They usually float on the surface, unlike other buoys that can withstand the pressures of deeper water.
Send said the response to the Hamamatsu buoy struck him as a little odd, given the common use of such devices in ocean research and maritime shipping.
“Maybe everybody is paranoid because of balloons,” he said.
A Chinese spy balloon over the United States, February 7, 2023. Photo / AP
Research buoys have washed up in Santa Barbara, California, and Miami in recent years, Send said. In those cases, painted phone numbers quickly directed authorities back to researchers.
But authorities in Hamamatsu, a city west of Tokyo, could not determine where the specimen had come from or who owned it, because its exterior was too rusty and had no visible markings, said Yagi of the coastal management bureau.
“We rarely have objects on the beach, aside from driftwood,” he added.
The fact that it was not covered by shells or seaweed suggests that it probably hadn’t travelled very far, said Shigeru Fujieda, an expert in marine debris at Kagoshima University in southern Japan. He said his best guess was that the buoy had been designed to anchor a ship or some other heavy object.
It probably was not used for scientific purposes, since it was both unpainted and larger than the research buoys that typically wash ashore, Fujieda added.
“Those buoys were slightly bigger than a basketball,” he said. “Not this big.”
