A Floating Dock from Japan off the Coast of Hawaii?

From NHK Kabun's tweet (9/21/2012):

アメリカ・ハワイ諸島の沖合で、浮き桟橋のようなものが漂っているのを地元の漁業者が見つけ、一部に日本語が書かれているとの情報もあることから、沿岸警備隊は東日本大震災の津波で流れ出た可能性があるとみて、航行する船に注意を呼びかけています。

A local fisherman found what looked like a floating dock off the coast of Hawaii. Japanese characters are reportedly written on part of the structure. The US Coast Guard is cautioning the ships, as the structure may have become adrift after the tsunami on March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan.

And here's from Hawaii News Now (9/20/2012):

A floating menace could be the biggest piece of tsunami debris Hawaii has seen yet. Exclusive Hawaii News Now video shows a floating dock with Japanese writing on it. It was last seen near Molokai.

The barge gets your attention and fishermen are concerned it's a hazard however what to do with it remains to be seen.

Two Maui fishermen got an up close look at this huge dock. One of them even climbed aboard and saw the Japanese writing. They estimate it's about 30 feet by 50 feet. The dock had pier cleats and electrical boxes attached.

The fisherman first saw it Monday night about 30 miles north of Hana, Maui. Then again Tuesday 25 miles northeast of Molokai. And again yesterday when it was about 15 miles north Molokai. Charting the course the fisherman thinks it will hit around Kahuku sometime Friday evening which had Oahu fisherman concerned.

"I'd hate to have to be traveling at night and no beacons or nothing on it. And some guys, not everybody has radar and to run into that could be devastating," said George White, Fisherman.

"They could seriously damage their boat even at night," said Joey Edwards, Fisherman.

(Full article at the link)

I wonder what kind of invasive species have hitched the ride...

Hawaii News Now - KGMB and KHNL

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#Tsunami Debris: 1.5 Tonnes of Seaweed, Mussels, Barnacles, Starfish Hitched Ride on the Dock from Aomori

There may be little to no worry about radiation (other than natural background), but the floating dock from Misawa Port in Aomori Prefecture in Japan that washed up on the Oregon coast had 1.5 tonnes of marine life that had hitched the 5,000-mile ride. Half of the plant species on the dock already exist on the west coast, according to the AP article below, meaning the remainder don't and may be "invasive species".

From My Way News quoting AP article (6/9/2012; emphasis is mine):

Invasive species ride tsunami debris to US shore

When a floating dock the size of a boxcar washed up on a sandy beach in Oregon, beachcombers got excited because it was the largest piece of debris from last year's tsunami in Japan to show up on the West Coast.

But scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers and further muck up the West Coast's marine environments. And more invasive species could be hitching rides on tsunami debris expected to arrive in the weeks and months to come.

"We know extinctions occur with invasions," said John Chapman, assistant professor of fisheries and invasive species specialist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. "This is like arrows shot into the dark. Some of them could hit a mark."

Though the global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports, the marine invasion has been in full swing since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond, Calif. For nearly a century before then, ships sailing up the coast carried barnacles and seaweeds.

Now, hotspots like San Francisco Bay amount to a "global zoo" of invasive species and perhaps 500 plants and animals from foreign shores have established in U.S. marine waters, said James Carlton, professor of marine sciences at Williams College. They come mostly from ship hulls and the water ships take on as ballast, but also get dumped into bays from home aquariums.

The costs quickly mount into the untold billions of dollars. Mitten crabs from China eat baby Dungeness crabs that are one of the region's top commercial fisheries. Spartina, a ropey seaweed from Europe, chokes commercial oyster beds. Shellfish plug the cooling water intakes of power plants. Kelps and tiny shrimp-like creatures change the food web that fish, marine mammals and even humans depend on.

A 2004 study in the scientific journal Ecological Economics estimated 400 threatened and endangered species in the U.S. are facing extinction because of pressures from invasive species.

It is too early for scientists to know how much Japanese tsunami debris may add to the invasive species already here.

"It may only introduce one thing," said Cohen of the Aquatic Bioinvasions research center. "But if that thing turns out to be a big problem, we would rather it not happen. There could be an economic impact, an ecological impact, or even a human health impact."

The dock, torn loose from a fishing port on the northern tip of Japan, was covered with 1.5 tons of seaweed, mussels, barnacles and even a few starfish. Volunteers scraped it all off, buried it above the high water line, and sterilized the top and sides of the dock with torches.

But there was no telling whether they might already have released spores or larvae that could establish a foothold in a bay or estuary as it floated along the coast, said Carlton.

"That's the 'Johnny Clamseed' approach," he said, referring to Johnny Appleseed, the pioneer apple tree planter of the early 19th century. "While that is theoretical, we don't actually know if that kind of thing happens."

Chapman estimated there were hundreds of millions of individual living organisms on the dock when it washed up on Agate Beach outside Newport, Ore.

But even a small plastic float that washed up on a beach in Alaska carried a live oyster, said Mandy Lindeberg, research scientist at the NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Laboratories in Juneau, Alaska.

The smaller bits of plastic expected to make up most of the tsunami debris won't have anything except species they picked up at sea, said Carlton.

On the dock, about half the plant species already exist on the West Coast, said Gayle Hansen, a research marine taxonomist at Oregon State University, who has spent hours with her eye scrunched up against a microscope examining samples from the dock.

Among the exotic seaweeds was one known as wakame, which has become a nuisance around the world, but is not yet found in Oregon, she said.

Whether hitchhiking species will survive here depends on randomness, she said. Seaweeds probably would not have survived to reproduce in the crashing surf at Agate Beach. It's the wrong kind of environment. But if they had floated into Yaquina Bay, very similar to their home waters in Japan, they could grow and reproduce.

Lindeberg said, "The only defense for invasive species is early detection. Just like cancer."

While monitoring is relatively cheap, say $30,000 to watch nearby waters for species from the dock, trying to stop an established invasion is expensive. California spent $7 million trying to eradicate a seaweed, she said.

She said she hoped there would be funding for monitoring tsunami invasive species.

James Morris, a marine ecologist and invasive species specialist at the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, in Beaufort, N.C., said the idea a natural disaster like the tsunami could introduce a new avenue for invasive species is intriguing.

"It goes to show you that when it comes to invasive species, there are some things you can work to regulate and control," he said. "And there are issues like this that come up that open up a whole different realm of possibilities."

Oh. I didn't know one of my favorite seaweeds, wakame, is considered a big nuisance...

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Dock from a Fishing Port in Aomori, Japan Washed up on Oregon Coast Near Newport

with some invasive marine species hitching the ride across the Pacific Ocean of about 5,000 miles.

From AP (6/6/2012):

Official: Dock found in Ore. is debris from Japan

By JEFF BARNARD

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.

A commemorative plaque on the dock showed it was one of four owned by Aomori Prefecture that broke loose from the port of Misawa on the northern tip of the main island, Deputy Consul Hirofumi Murabayashi said from Portland, Ore.

One of the four docks turned up several weeks later on an island south of Misawa, but the other two are still missing, said Akihisa Sato, an engineer with Zeniya Kaiyo Service, the dock's Tokyo-based manufacturer.

The docks weigh 165 tons each, Sato said.

The one that floated to Oregon was first spotted floating offshore Monday, and mistaken by several people for a barge, said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation. It washed ashore early Tuesday on Agate Beach, a mile north of Newport on the central Oregon Coast. It's made of concrete with a metal pontoon and measures 66 feet long, 19 feet wide and 7 feet high.

The distance between Japan and Oregon is roughly 5,000 miles.

A starfish native to Japan was among the marine life still clinging to the structure after the long voyage, Havel said.

"This is tsunami debris, not just from Japan, but from the tsunami itself," Havel said.

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."

A radiation check of the dock came up negative, which was to be expected if the dock broke loose before the nuclear power plant accident triggered by the waves, Havel said. The parks department was overseeing efforts to identify and remove the dock.

(Full article at the link)

Photos from AP (more at the link):

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Ministry of the Environment: "Tsunami Debris May Have Already Reached North America, Back in February..."

Oops. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution just recently released a paper saying the debris may reach North America in 1 to 2 years (see Huffington Post, 4/3/2012).

From Jiji Tsushin (4/6/2012):

既に北米沿岸到達か＝震災漂流物で予測－環境省

Ministry of the Environment's Forecast of disaster debris in the ocean: it may have already reached North America

　環境省は６日、東日本大震災の津波で生じた海洋漂流物の動きに関する予測結果を発表した。それによると、ブイなど海面上に浮かんでいて風の影響を受けやすい漂流物の一部は、太平洋を東へ流れ、今年２月にカナダ西海岸の沿岸に達している可能性があることが分かった。

The Ministry of the Environment announced its forecast of the movement of the disaster debris in the [Pacific] ocean after the March 11, 2011 tsunami. According to the forecast, part of the debris floating on the surface of the ocean that is more easily affected by winds may have traveled across the Pacific Ocean and reached the west coast of Canada in February this year.

　漂流物の大半を占める壊れた家屋などのがれき１３３万トンについて同省が試算したところ、２０１３年２月には、がれきの約３％に当たる約４万１３００トンが北米西海岸の沖合１０キロの範囲に到達する見込み。

The Ministry's forecast of 1.33 million tonnes of debris from houses that got swept away, which consists the majority of the debris, shows about 3% of this type of debris, or about 41,300 tonnes, may reach within 10 kilometers off the west coast of North America by February 2013.

I can't find a press release on the subject at the Ministry's website. If the Ministry is to be believed, the first debris took only 11 months, instead of 1 to 2 years (I remember they were counting on two years).

Even the NOAA seems to have changed the story a little bit, and now says "NOAA researchers are currently relying on computer models to predict the debris items’ path and drift rate, but it's possible that some buoyant materials are reaching U.S. shorelines right now."

By the way, the Huffington Post article is more about the radioactivity of seawater, but here are some clarifications for readers who will go read it and get confused. The writer says:

Even so, Buesseler said, the radioactivity levels are still below what is allowed in food in Japan, which is 500 Bq per kilogram of "wet" weight.

Not any more. As of April 1, 2012, that level is 100 Bq/kg, and it's only for radioactive cesium.

The writer also says:

And while cesium was present in the fish, it doesn't accumulate up the food chain the way polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or mercury do.

That's what Japan's Fisheries Agency claimed last year, right after the accident occurred. It does accumulate up the food chain, particularly when there is a constant supply of radioactive cesium in the environment.

And:

The researchers also found silver-110, but it wasn't clear that was from the Fukushima plant.

Most likely, they detected Ag-110m, which has a half life of 250 days. It would be definitely from the Fukushima plant.

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