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Four Years On

March 11, 2015

In March 2011 one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded shook Japan, creating a tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant and resulted in the largest unintentional release of radioactivity into the ocean in history. Since then, WHOI chemist Ken Buesseler, shown with the nuclear plant in the background, has been monitoring the spread of radiation across the Pacific. He created OurRadioactiveOcean.org, a citizen-science effort to collect seawater samples along the West Coast. His work is the foundation of a new museum program, premiering today at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif.(Photo courtesy of Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)