A cement NHL 16 Coins float hit US shores

A cement NHL 16 Coins float hit US shores this week, bringing nearly 100tonnes of sea life with it from Asia. Researchers were surprised to discover that the debris onboard-- part of the predicted 1.3 million tonnes expected to arrivealong the US coastline following the 2011 Japanese tsunami--was made up almost exclusively ofspecies from Asia, with few new creatures adopted along the 8,850kmjourney to the US. The float itself is one of four that were rippedfrom the fishing port of Misawa when the tsunami struck in March -- it was not seen again, untilonlookers spotted it floating at sea earlier this week.  "This float is an island unlike any transoceanic debris we haveever seen," John Chapman of Oregon State University's Hatfield MarineScience Centre said in a statement. "It is as if the float driftedover here by hugging the coasts, but that is of course impossible.Life on the open ocean, while drifting, may be more gentle forthese organisms than we initially suspected. Invertebrates cansurvive for months without food and the most abundant algae speciesmay not have had the normal compliment of herbivores. Still, it issurprising." Chapman and his team gathered barnacles, starfish, urchins,anemones, amphipods, worms, mussels, limpets, snails, solitarytunicates and algae from the float, which arrived off the coast ofNewport, Oregon.

A brown algae known as wakame native to AsiaPacific dominated it -- the seaweed has already begun to infiltrateregions in California, but had not yet reached as far north asOregon. "It had plenty of really bad species from Japan onit," Chapman told Wired, "including Undaria pinnatifida[wakame], Asteria amurensis -- a sea star that has invadedAustralia's coast -- and Hemigrapsus sanguineas, the Japanese shorecrab which has spectacularly invaded the east coast of the US.There are many more species that we are trying to identify.