The deadly tsunami that struck north-east Japan in 2011 has carried almost 300 species of sea life thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the United States.
In what experts are calling the longest maritime migration ever recorded, an estimated one million creatures – including crustaceans, sea slugs and sea worms – made the 4,800-mile (7,725km) journey on a flotilla of tsunami debris.
“This has turned out to be one of the biggest unplanned natural experiments in marine biology – perhaps in history,” said John Chapman, an expert at Oregon State University who co-authored a study of the creatures published this week in the journal Science.
The towering tsunami, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake on the afternoon of 11 March 2011, generated five million tonnes of debris from the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
About 70% sank quickly to the ocean floor, according to experts, but countless buoys, docks, boats and other items with buoyancy were swept out to sea.
Between June 2012 and February this year 289 Japanese species attached to 600 pieces of debris washed up on beaches in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, British Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii, according to the study.
Some of the creatures – about two-thirds of which had never been seen on the US west coast – reproduced as they drifted eastward.
“The diversity was somewhat jaw-dropping,” said James Carlton, a marine sciences professor at Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. “Molluscs, sea anemones, corals, crabs, just a wide variety of species, really a cross-section of Japanese fauna.”
Although the rate of new arrivals has slowed, researchers were still discovering colonised tsunami wreckage on west coast beaches when their study ended earlier this year.
Only last year – five years after the disaster – a Japanese boat arrived in Oregon with 20 fish native to the western Pacific inside. Some of the fish can be viewed at an aquarium in the state, Carlton said.
The tsunami flotilla is a reminder of the threat that millions of tonnes of plastic pose to the global marine environment.
Most of the creatures found in the US were attached to buoys, boats, crate and other items made from plastic, fibreglass and other materials that do not decompose.
“I didn’t think that most of these coastal organisms could survive at sea for long periods of time,” said Greg Ruiz, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, who co-authored the study.
“But in many ways they just haven’t had much opportunity in the past. Now, plastic can combine with tsunami and storm events to create that opportunity on a large scale.”
Experts say it will be several years before they can say if any of the creatures have colonised on the west coast, which might pose a threat to native marine life.
The creatures are not the only products of the tsunami to have generated interest on the other side of the Pacific. In April 2012 a couple in Alaska found a football belonging to Misaki Murakami, a Japanese teenager who had lost his home in the disaster.
Two 3-year-old boys were recovering after they were shot by another child at an unlicensed home daycare in Dearborn, Mich., authorities said.
It’s unclear how the toddler got ahold of the handgun involved in Wednesday’s shooting.
The bullet went through one boy and hit the other. Both boys were transported to trauma centers, ABC affiliate WXYZ reported.
“The toddler who suffered the shoulder injury is expected to make a full recovery, while the other victim remains in serious but stable condition,” the City of Dearborn Police Department said in a press release Thursday.
One young victim of a shooting at a home is expected to make a full recovery while the other remains in stable condition.
(Tanya Moutzalias/AP)
Several other children and adults were in the home when the shooting occurred. Police took the other children to the police station to be reunited with their families, WXYZ reported.
Samantha Eubanks, 31, regularly watches up to 10 or more children at the home, neighbors said.
Ashley Escobedo, Eubank’s sister, said Eubank sometimes watches her kids. Escobedo seemed bewildered that there would be a gun in the house.
“My sister is totally against guns,” Escobedo said to the Detroit Free Press. “She hates guns.”
Police said the young children were wounded in the apparently accidental shooting at the home that was being used for childcare in suburban Detroit.
(Tanya Moutzalias/AP)
The home daycare does not currently hold a license from the state of Michigan as a Family Child Care Home, the Detroit Free Press reports. If one to seven children — who are not related to the adult caretaker — receive care for a month or more per year, and if the caretaker brings in more than $600 annually from this babysitting, the law states the home must be registered. It is unclear if Eubank’s home met this criteria. Eubanks has six children of her own.
Police recovered weapons from the home and said the investigation is ongoing.
