This June a dock weighing more than 180 tons washed up on the Oregon coast, about a year after being dislodged from Japan’s seashore during the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck there in March 2011. The dock is one of the largest pieces of debris to wash up on the opposite side of the Pacific, and it arrived earlier than anyone expected. But a bigger surprise for researchers and natural-resource managers dealing with the debris was the profusion of marine organisms clinging to the dock, many of which have already been pegged as potentially aggressive invasive species. “We have already identified very bad things on this debris,” says John Chapman, an expert on marine invasive species at Oregon State University. “We can already see things that we definitely do not want.”
One species clinging to the dock that is causing concern to Chapman and his colleagues is wakame (Undaria ...
