Tsunami Boat from Japan

A twenty-five-foot-long, six-foot-beam fiberglass Japanese fishing boat was swept out to sea during the deadly March 11, 2011, Japanese earthquake and tsunami and drifted across the Pacific Ocean for a decade before landing on a beach near Waldport, Oregon, on March 21, 2021. The disaster left some 20,000 people dead and also led to a remarkable biological rafting event in which tsunami debris transported some 300 species of living organisms from Japan to North America and Hawaii. This boat carried a living colony of crustaceans, tubeworms, and other invertebrates, and it became part of tsunami debris research by Dr. James T. Carlton, his colleagues, and the Coastal and Ocean Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum. The drama and power of this rafting event also inspired Alexis Rockman's painting, Tsunami.

Mystic, Connecticut · United States