Ralph and Shirley Spencer of Ocean Park proudly display a unique assortment of colored glass floats collected recently while driving the beach. Shirley is holding a "rolling pin float." RON MALAST photo

PENINSULA – A Japanese fishing float found on the beach of the Peninsula usually rates a picture or article in the paper.

This year, particularly in the past month, a northwest and westerly swell, plus an abundance of westerly wind, has presented commercial fishermen and beachcombers with a pirate’s cache of treasures.

In the past couple of weeks a crab boat out of Chinook has picked up six floats and the crab boat Fast Break picked up 13. The charter boats Sea Sport, the Star Dust and the Big Dipper picked up a total of 21 floats, and those are strictly the ones reported to us. Some floats were basketball size, some the size of a baseball, and one a rolling pin. One crab boat working off Rockaway Beach found 42 small floats.

Capt. Dick Gonder, operating the 95-foot tugboat Master, of the Brusco Company said, “Last week while leaving Grays Harbor we spotted a line of krill, just off the Sea Buoy. We ran through the krill and found 12 glass fishing floats. Then while operating out of Newport, Ore., we came upon another six glass floats just off Stonewall Banks, the crew was thrilled as we netted these elusive Japanese floats. In all of our years at sea we have never been so fortunate.” The floats collected comprised three basketball-sized, seven medium and eight small floats.

These findings are not limited to ocean going vessels; John and Diane Howard of Ocean Park came upon three glass balls while walking the beach. A gentlemen who wishes to remain unnamed, has picked up close to 100 this year alone.

Ralph and Shirley Spencer of Ocean Park have just recently added eight glass floats to their collection – some very uniquely colored – while driving the beach.

Further research revealed that so many glass floats were made in Japan one might guess the Japanese were the first to use them, but this is not so!

Glass floats can be traced back to Norway in 1844, while Japan only started copying the floats around 1910. Denmark, Czechoslo-vakia, and Scotland copied the idea of glass later in the 19th century. By the 1940s, England, France, Germany, Russia and the United States were all making and using glass-fishing floats. Plastic, wood and cork were used for a while but glass was more durable and it was cheap.

After World War II, fishing accelerated, especially for the Japanese, and glass was again the float of choice, although the United States continued to make wooden floats until 1956.

Hand-blown floats have no seams and often no markings and are the oldest. Identifying marks were often embossed on or near the sealing button, some with identifying kanji symbols. The air bubbles help identify a Japanese fish float as authentic. Wooden molds later were used to speed up the float-making process. Those mold marks can be seen as seams on the outside of the glass and occasionally you can see the actual knife marks where the wood was carved.

Probably the most desirable and valuable floats are the rolling pins and those that have water in them. If there were microscopic imperfections in the sealing of the sealing pontil when the float was made, it is possible for water to enter.

Normally there is only five pounds of air pressure inside the float, considering the sealing pressure of 1,000 degrees. If a net with floats was pulled under the surface of the ocean, even to the bottom in strong currents, the pressure on the surface float would be about 400-pounds per square inch. A defect in the float would allow water to leak into the glass ball.

A second theory of water entering a float is that floats sometimes become trapped under the arctic ice pack or even an iceberg, for undetermined lengths of time. While under the ice, the floats are under exceedingly high-pressures that cause the ice to constrict locally around the glass. The water then forces itself inside the float. There are a very limited number of floats containing water.

The Kuroshio starts as a northern branch of the western flowing Pacific Equatorial current, then meets the arctic waters of the Oyasshio current and travels across the Pacific where it slows down in the Gulf of Alaska. As it turns south, the California current pulls the water into the North Pacific Equatorial current once again and this circle continues endlessly. The floats could cruise for eternity, except for the storms that bring them ashore.

When the net breaks off from the float from age and wear, the glass will show the image of the original net. It is estimated that it takes a minimum of ten years to wash up on the beaches of Alaska, and many, many more to reach the waters off the Washington coast.

Japanese floats made after World War II were supposed to be marked “made in occupied Japan,” but this was not a popular term appreciated by the Japanese, and primarily ignored, substituting the phrase “made in Japan.”

As Japanese fishing floats become more difficult to find, the interest to capture one becomes more intense.

Evidently, the past couple of months have been very prolific for those searching for these treasures on the Peninsula.