Cargo-spilling ship leaves Northwest, returns to Asia

Nearly four months after spilling 109 shipping containers off the Washington and British Columbia coasts, the Zim Kingston left North American waters on Wednesday.

There’s still no sign of 105 containers that the cargo ship lost during a storm in October, about 40 miles west of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and 30 miles southwest of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island.

Large volumes of debris from the Oct. 21 spill drifted north onto wilderness beaches at the north end of Vancouver Island within a week. At least one bit of plastic debris floated as far as Haida Gwaii, the island chain just south of Canada’s border with Alaska, a few days later.

A Yeti brand plastic cooler washed up some 450 miles northwest of the spill in near-perfect condition on Oct. 30, according to the Council of the Haida Nation, the Indigenous government of Haida Gwaii.

The tides have delivered more coolers since then, banged up but often still usable.