Dock float from tsunami washes ashore
A dock float made an incredible journey across 5,000 miles of ocean from Japan to Oregon.
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Newport, Ore.
Along for the ride were hundreds of millions of individual organisms, including a tiny species of crab, a species of algae, and a little starfish all native to Japan that have scientists worried if they get a chance to spread out on the West Coast.
"This is a very clear threat," said John Chapman, a research scientist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., where the dock float washed up. "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."
Credit: AP Photo/The Oregonian, Thomas Boyd
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