In the News

In what news outlets around the world are calling “the largest and longest marine migration ever documented,” nearly 300 species of fish, shellfish and other ocean life rafted across the Pacific Ocean on manmade debris from Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami and washed ashore, alive, on the Canadian and U.S. coasts. That’s according to a six-year study published by James T. Carlton, professor of marine sciences, emeritus, and other researchers in the September issue of Science. “The diversity was somewhat jaw-dropping: mollusks, sea anemones, corals, crabs, just a wide variety of species, really a cross-section of Japanese fauna,” Carlton said in an interview with CBS News, adding, “It was the plastic debris that allowed new species to survive far longer than we ever thought they would.”