Invasive species ride tsunami debris to US shore

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."

One thing they know is that the bigger the debris, the more likely it has something on it.

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."

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