PORTLAND – Algae and an oyster are among the clues
Oregon biologists believe may link the vestiges of a sea-ravaged boat that
washed up on a state beach on Tuesday to the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Five years after Japan’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake set
off a series of massive tsunami waves that demolished a swath of Japan’s
Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000 people, debris – and sea creatures –
from the disaster are still finding their way to the Oregon shore, said Chris
Havel, a spokesman for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

“That kind of habitat attracts living animals even
if it’s floating out in the ocean,” Havel said. “We should not be
surprised to continue to see debris from Japan wash up on the shores.”

The state has provided United States and Japanese
officials with the boat’s ID number and could hear back within a couple of
days.

Barring a clear official identification, research on the
animals tucked inside could help confirm whether the flotsam originated some
8,000 kilometres away – more than double the distance from Canada to Mexico,
said John Chapman, a biologist from Oregon State University who is testing the
samples.

In addition to the oyster and algae, biologists took a
barnacle shell and a planes crab for testing.

The biology of the mollusks shows Asian origin, and the
wreckage “does look like something that would have come from the
tsunami,” Chapman said.

In 2012, a massive, 20-metre-long dock ripped from its
moorings in Japan and floated up 15 months later on a beach north of Newport,
Oregon, southwest of Portland. A year ago, remains of a boat filled with live
fish native to Japanese waters washed ashore.

The 5-metre-long chunk of boat landed on Tuesday morning
near Coos Bay, about 320 km south of Portland, and was expected to be disposed
of in a landfill by the end of the day, said Calum Stevenson, ocean shore
specialist for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

A US Coast Guard helicopter crew spotted the boat
fragment in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month and attached a tracking buoy
to it.

– Reuters