A small boat washed ashore near Ocean Shores this week, covered in a thick layer of marine life. It may have been set adrift during the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
Grays Harbor County Emergency Management Deputy Director Chuck Wallace said it may take about a week to identify the boat’s origin and any invasive species clinging to it, if identification is possible. There appear to be some sort of Asian characters written on the boat but the language has not yet been identified.
“There’s something on there, but they can’t make it out,” Wallace said. “It has a tremendous amount of vegetation, so it’s been in the water for quite a while.”
Linda Kent of the state Department of Ecology said it’s been about a year since the last piece of confirmed debris from Japan’s tsunami washed up on Washington shores.
A skiff washed up at the Makah Nation Indian Reservation in May 2013. Perhaps the most dramatic find was another small boat that came ashore near Long Beach in March 2013 with five small, live fish trapped inside.
So far, Kent said, nothing like that has been found in the boat found this week, which has been moved to Ocean City State Park for cleanup. No oils or other hazardous materials were found on board.
Numerous clam and barnacle species are attached, largely the strange, pink gooseneck barnacle.
“Anything that’s been out in the ocean for a long time, it’s pretty common for an object to acquire those,” Kent explained. “They’re not considered an invasive species or anything, (but) they look really strange.”
Whether the boat has any remarkable contents, if it’s found to be from Japan, Wallace said, it’s an important piece of information for scientists.
“Events like this help modelers,” he said. “If it was March of 2011 and we’re in April 2014, that’s three years and one month since the event took place for that to wash up here. The scientific community likes to go back and evaluate and model what could have happened to it. … This is how we learn things.”
Though a tsunami debris hotline established after the storm has since been deactivated, there are still several ways to report possible debris.
“It depends on the type of debris, really,” Kent said. “If it looks like a hazardous material, like an oil drum or a gas cylinder or a container that looks like a gas can or something like that — those type of things — people should not touch them, they should not try to remove them from the beach. What they should do is call 1-800-OILS-911.”
If it doesn’t look dangerous, people can email DisasterDebris@noaa.gov. If there’s concern about invasive species, call 911 or 888-WDFW-AIS, or fill out an online report at http://ift.tt/1i1LQ75.
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