Most of the major damage from the magnitude-7.3 quake that occurred at 11:07 p.m. on Feb. 13 off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture was concentrated in Fukushima and neighboring Miyagi prefectures. The number of people injured by a powerful earthquake in northeastern Japan two days earlier rose to 153, but no deaths were reported as of Feb. 15.

I knew that those Japanese currents would come to our waters, and so that’s why I volunteered to do the testing,” Eddie Ungott, a resident of Gambell.

Since 2014 St. Lawrence Islanders have been collecting sea water samples, knowing that the radiation would eventually show up. Now the signature of Fukushima has finally been identified, the northern most sample evidence of the plume. Fortunately the levels are low.

Trace 134Cs in northern fur seal tissue suggests that the population under study had been minimally exposed Fukushima-derived radionuclides. Despite this inference, the radionuclide quantities detected are small and no impact is expected as a result of the measured radiation exposure, either in northern fur seal or human populations consuming this species.