Some residents of the west coast of Vanouver island believe they are starting to see debris from the devastating Japanese tsunami in March.

Plastic water bottles with Japanese labels and pieces of wood have come ashore near Tofino, possibly precursors of the massive amount of debris predicted to be shifted by ocean currents and hit the same shores in 2014.

There's no scientific proof that the flotsam found so far is related to the March 11 disaster in northern Japan, which killed about 26,000 people, flattened small cities, and unleashed radioactivity from ruined nuclear power plants.

But associated directly with the tsunami or not, the debris is a warning of what's to come, as the CBC's Alan Waterman reports.