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A Japanese bob that ripped from its mooring during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and wash ashore in Oregon this week bring with it an estimated 100 tons of sea life .
Oregon State University ( OSU ) scientists said Thursday that there are about 13 pounds of organisms per square foot on the 66 - pes - long dock , which has been trace to the Northeast coast of Japan . Tests show that the dock is not contaminate with radiation from theFukushima nuclear works meltdownafter the tsunami , but it did bring with it the danger of incursive specie .
The dock that washed ashore in Oregon is 66 feet long and covered with an estimated ton of marine life.
" This float is an island unlike any transoceanic debris we have ever seen , " John Chapman , an OSU marine invasive species specializer , aver in a statement . " Drifting boatslack such obtuse fouling community , and few of these species are already on this coast . Nearly all of the species we ’ve look at were established on the float before the tsunami ; few came after it was at ocean . " [ Images : Japanese Tsunami Dock On Shore ]
Among the hitchhikers are urchin , starfish , windflower , flealike crustacean called amphipods , worms , mussels , limpets , snail , filter feeders called solitary tunicates , algae , and four to six species of barnacles , Chapman and his colleagues reported .
Estimates from the Nipponese government andNASAsuggest the monstrous tsunami broom up5 million dozens of debris , with about 70 percent sinking to the seafloor ; the rest ( 1.5 million tons ) , like this huge sour grass , have been swim across the ocean . And although tsunami debris has probably been washing up on the west coast for months , the investigator were shocked to see such a richraft of lifemake it all the path across the open Pacific , where food for thought is scarce , to Newport , Ore.
The dock that washed ashore in Oregon is 66 feet long and covered with an estimated ton of marine life.
" It is as if the swim bladder drifted over here by squeeze the sea-coast , but that is of course out of the question , " Chapman said . " living on the undetermined ocean , while wander , may be more aristocratic for these organism than we initially suspected . invertebrate can survive for months without food and the most abundant alga species may not have had the normal compliment of herbivores . Still , it is surprising . "
Oregon state officials are organise volunteers to scrape the dock sporting of the being , which will be bagged and disposed of . Many of the species are not aboriginal to Oregon ’s shores , and could damage the state ’s ecosystem if they become established there .
For model , a dark-brown alga calledUndaria pinnatifidawas present over much of the docking facility , according to Jessica Miller , an ecologist at Oregon State . The algae is aboriginal to the westerly Pacific , but has established itself in southern California .
" To my knowledge it has not been reported northward of Monterey , Calif. , so this is something we ask to watch out for , " Miller said in a program line .
Likewise , little shore crabs found on the dock are similar enough to one that survive in Oregon that they could find a home on the DoS ’s coast . Oysters , dollar bill , limpets , escargot , musssels , ocean stars and worms could also move in , Miller said .
These small creatures can have a self-aggrandising impact . The invasivezebra mussel , for example has grow so dumbly in some lake and flow in the United States that no other species can hold up . They even clog inlet for drinking water and for hydroelectric companies .
It ’s too soon to say whether any of the metal money on the dock bailed before attain the beach , according to the Oregon State biologists .
" We have no grounds so far that anything from this float has established on our shores , " say Chapman . " That will take clip . However , we are vulnerable . One new introduce species is discover in Yaquina Bay , only two miles out , every year . We hope that none of these specie we are incur on this ice-cream float will be among the young discoveries in twelvemonth to come . "
