The debris from the Tsunami in Japan is now washing up on the beaches of the Pacific Coast:
A nearly 70-foot-long dock that floated ashore on an Oregon beach was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year’s tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean, a Japanese Consulate official said Wednesday.
Radiation has not been an issue with this piece of debris, however, there are concerns over organisms that have “hitchhiked” on the dock:
John Chapman, a research scientist at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, said hundreds of millions of other organisms also hitchhiked across the ocean on the dock — some of which are invasive species never before seen on this part of the West Coast.
Among the organisms are a species of tiny crab that has run wild on the East Coast but not on the West, and a kind of algae that has hit southern California but not Oregon, Chapman said.
“This is a very clear threat,” he said. “It’s exactly like saying you threw a bowling ball into a China shop. It’s going to break something. But will it be valuable or cheap glass. It’s incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next.”
via Japan Tsunami Debris: Dock On Oregon Beach Definitely From Japan – Huffington Post.
If you’re interested in helping with the clean up please join Ayoudo in our volunteer efforts. Click here for more details.
