“A few weeks ago, the community of Perros-Guirec in Brittany, France, found a yellow can buoy washed up on their rocky coastline,” Dry Tortugas National Park wrote in a June 4 Facebook post.

Beijing has defied Tokyo’s repeated demands to remove a buoy set up within Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea, leaving the impasse in uncharted waters for about 10 months.