Dr. James Carlton, Director of the Williams-Mystic Program and Professor of Marine Sciences, presented on “Coming to America: Marine Biology and Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris” at Log Lunch on April 12. Focusing on the story of four large docks dislodged from the port of Misawa in Japan, Carlton discussed the process of locating and tracing debris that was displaced by the 2011 tsunami and subsequently traversed the Pacific to land on the western shores of the U.S. The first dock washed up on an Oregon beach in June 2012 and another landed in a remote part of Olympic National Park in Washington, while a third was sighted off the coast of Hawaii but has not been seen since September 2012. The fourth dock is still missing!
While the simple fact that such large structures are crossing the ocean without disintegrating shows a significant change over time, Carlton emphasized the important biological impacts of such arrivals. Docks and other debris have been found with many living, reproductive species aboard—perhaps most notably, a boat was found in March that held five fish in a sort of “tide pool” on its hull. Carlton noted the potential challenges of reconciling scientific objectives—to obtain and analyze samples—with management goals of removing the debris as quickly as possible, as well as the political questions raised by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s position that debris and species that arrive because of the tsunami cannot be distinguished from those that arrive “naturally.”