By Andrea Castillo

Commercial fisherman Mark Schneider said he watched a refrigerator float past his boat, Sea Princess, while he and his crew were salmon fishing on Thursday near Newport.

The refrigerator was presumably part of a wave of debris coming into the Oregon coast in the aftermath of Japan's 2011 tsunami.

"If I had hit that (refrigerator) it might have put a big chunk in my boat," said Schneider, who works out of Newport.

 He was part of a group of fishing and shipping representatives who met Saturday morning in Newport with Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Kurt Schrader, both D-Ore., to brainstorm possible solutions to the dangers of tsunami debris. The meeting included 20 representatives from steamship and tugboat operators, as well as commercial and sport fishermen.

Schneider and many other fishermen share the same concern: How to stay safe in the water. Although most of the debris is small, the massive dock with Japanese lettering that washed ashore on Agate Beach early in June has prompted worries that similar debris will continue to arrive.

"I own a wooden boat and if we hit that dock ... we'd be calling the Coast Guard to come bail my butt out of the water," Schneider said. "And hopefully I'd have time to get to my life raft, but if you hit that thing at night, it's over."

Fishermen have limited access to technology while out in the open sea, which makes it hard to remain constantly updated about incoming debris. Not knowing what exactly is floating near the coast poses a potential threat to their safety.

However, satellite phones make it easy for them to access the Internet. While several ideas were brought up at the meeting, the most popular approach was to create a central alert system on a website that fishermen can access online from their vessels to stay as up-to-date as possible on what type of and how much debris is floating around in the water.

"Our eyes and ears are the fleet -- the major shipping fleet as well as the fishing fleet," Schrader said. "They can, at no cost to any taxpayer, identify a lot of the stuff that's going on, how and where to report that to, and what are the things we can realistically expect the Coast Guard to deal with."

Before Saturday's meeting, it wasn't clear how to coordinate what happens with debris between the beach and the outer ocean, Schrader said.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., recently asked the Coast Guard to clarify its role in handling tsunami waste.The Coast Guard only removes debris from the ocean if it poses a hazard to navigation or is made of hazardous materials such as oil, said Capt. Bruce Jones, Columbia River sector commander for the Coast Guard.

For the Coast Guard to remove debris, it must also be in either a widely traveled shipping area or a port. "The vast area of the ocean is not a shipping lane, so we wouldn't necessarily go and remove a piece of debris that's just out in the ocean if it's not near known shipping traffic," Jones said.

"Some of the comments here today seem to suggest that if there's debris in the water the Coast Guard ought to get it. There's no agency that removes debris from the water except when it's a clear hazard to navigation," Jones said.

Wyden said he plans to recommend the central alert system idea at a meeting with other agencies next week.