Invasive Species Ride Tsunami Debris To US Shore 173
An anonymous reader writes "When a floating dock the size of a boxcar washed up on a sandy beach in Oregon, beachcombers got excited because it was the largest piece of debris from last year's tsunami in Japan to show up on the West Coast.
But scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers and further muck up the West Coast's marine environments. And more invasive species could be hitching rides on tsunami debris expected to arrive in the weeks and months to come."
More sushi! (Score:5, Funny)
Anything that brings cheaper sushi, I am all for it! Best way to resolve invasive species problems... first find a way to serve them up!
Re:More sushi! (Score:5, Funny)
Tsunami sushi....is people!!!
Re:More sushi! (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed!!
Please ship some samples down here to the New Orleans area, we can find a way to cook anything....and make it taste good!!
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Nutria is a good match for creole recipes. It's got a strong flavor not unlike the dark meat from a turkey that can still be tasted when used in spicy recipes like this one [nutria.com] and it does taste good.
The problem is it looks a bit too much like a giant rat, even though it's closer to a beaver. People in the US have a psychological issue with the thought of eating rats, so it's not likely that it will ever be a popular ingredient.
we were wrong, so wrong (Score:2)
i know it seems all cutesy wutesy, but if you have watched Prometheus 5 times in a row in the theatre like i have, you will know that we cannot trust these little buggers.
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Replying to myself: Whoever marked my original message overrated as obviously never tried lionfish [popularmechanics.com]!
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The debris got a pretty good head start on the radioactive leakage, and most of it came from areas quite far from the power plant. You'd very likely experience more radiation from radon in the tap water while taking a shower in Texas than from fish or driftwood and debris on the coast.
I think the people that sunk the ship that floated over here were complete idiots. Shot and sunk it to reduce pollution? As if there wouldn't be fuel leakage with it underwater. It should have been cleaned up and put to us
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Unless the invasiva species talked about in the article were the Godzilla, they can't be that radioactive, seeing how they're still alive.
Attention, "Fittest": (Score:5, Insightful)
Start surviving....NOW!
Sincerely,
Nature.
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:5, Interesting)
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Grab a chunk of natural, untreated wood and leave it in water for a few months. It'll absorb water and sink like a rock, then it'll rot. It's not going to be carrying passengers across an ocean, unlike treated everything-proof wood you'd use on a ship or a dock.
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Grab a chunk of natural, untreated wood and leave it in water for a few months.
Like the driftwood that continually washes up on the beach?
It's not going to be carrying passengers across an ocean, unlike treated everything-proof wood you'd use on a ship or a dock.
Would those passengers be likely to tolerate the CCA or other treatments over the trans-ocean journey?
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:4, Insightful)
Grab a chunk of natural, untreated wood and leave it in water for a few months.
Like the driftwood that continually washes up on the beach?
Driftwood isn't going to be from the other side of the planet. It will be from much closer and will make landfall before it fully waterlogs.
It's not going to be carrying passengers across an ocean, unlike treated everything-proof wood you'd use on a ship or a dock.
Would those passengers be likely to tolerate the CCA or other treatments over the trans-ocean journey?
If the wood is just being used as a substrate and not as a nutrition source, quite likely.
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:4, Interesting)
Sink, yes... not so sure about rot.
I often visit lake Lewisville, and the top end of the lake (the old Lake Dallas) was impounded about 100 years ago now. The trees are STILL THERE. They rot down to the water level, then stay there as nearly invisible hazards to boaters...
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What you're seeing with the water line is the difference of weather above the water line and repeated wet/dry/wet cycles as the sun dries out the portion above the water. The stumps are certainly 'softer' than they were and eventually they'll decay away, but it takes decades/centuries me thinks.
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See the Mary Rose - http://www.maryrose.org/ [maryrose.org]
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Grab a chunk of natural, untreated wood and leave it in water for a few months. It'll absorb water and sink like a rock, then it'll rot. It's not going to be carrying passengers across an ocean, unlike treated everything-proof wood you'd use on a ship or a dock.
Has anyone tested this experimentally? I've heard of hardwoods becoming waterlogged and sinking, but that doesn't cause rot. The lack of oxygen and low temperatures actually preserve the wood. [timesfreepress.com]
However, I suspect the length of time timber can remain afloat varies greatly by species. This might be a good research opportunity. Are there any natural timbers in this debris? If so, what species?
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:4, Informative)
Grab a chunk of natural, untreated wood and leave it in water for a few months. It'll absorb water and sink like a rock, then it'll rot. It's not going to be carrying passengers across an ocean, unlike treated everything-proof wood you'd use on a ship or a dock.
Contrary to your claim, a piece of driftwood [wikipedia.org] has been floating in Crater Lake, Oregon for well over a century.
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Why is it that what humans do seems never to be classified as "natural", though? Either we're part of nature or we're not.
I've always found it rather arrogant of us to think that Nature won't figure out a way for us (or our descendants or some other species' descendants) to survive long after we're worm food.
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I've always found it rather arrogant of us to think that Nature won't figure out a way for us (or our descendants or some other species' descendants) to survive long after we're worm food.
Nature flatly doesn't care whether we survive or not. A parasite that kills its host is not a long term survival strategy, and we are systematically altering the environments in which we are supported or 'hosted'.
Why is it that what humans do seems never to be classified as "natural"
Maybe because we've only been here a blink of an eye? The world exists for literally billions of years before we showed up. We're the interlopers, it would behoove us to live within the stable parameters rather than see how far we can push them before a very complex system decides it's too far.
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nothing else exists except nature, so there cannot be anything that exists or occurs that isn't natural.
Natural vs un- or super-natural (i.e. "exists" vs "doesn't exist")
Natural vs artificial (i.e. "not man-made" vs "man-made")
Both are valid contexts for natural, but one is more often meaningful when talking about reality (the one that isn't made meaningless by the context).
it's just what happens when you ask DNA to grow humans.
Hey, I'm all for the observation that humans are a part of the natural world -- except for when it's used to dismiss human agency. We are the only species we know for sure can (and has) changed our behavior specifically because of conscio
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We are the only species we know for sure can (and has) changed our behavior specifically because of conscious consideration for the large-scale and long-term effects of what we were doing before.
assuming this is true, so what? conscious choice, unconscious choice, it's all still a product of nature. nature created our conscious choice -- in fact we recently discovered a way in which nature itself makes physical choices with our genes (it's speculated that it's responsible for our intelligence) http://news.discovery.com/human/ancient-human-brain-neanderthal-120506.html [discovery.com]. it's a tool we use, the same way primates use tools to groom themselves. there is really no such thing as artificial. we use the wo
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Hey, don't know why it took so long for me to see this response, but you raise some points I have to address.
assuming this is true, so what? conscious choice, unconscious choice, it's all still a product of nature. nature created our conscious choice
So don't dismiss human agency, and abdicate responsibility for your ability to choose, just because it's a "product of nature"! You said that polluted overpopulated cities are "just what happens" as a result of our DNA. That's simply untrue. Genetically modern humans didn't build cities for far longer than we have. What happens when you ask DNA to make humans is you get an animal capable of think
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So don't dismiss human agency, and abdicate responsibility for your ability to choose, just because it's a "product of nature"!
i never said anything of the kind. i'm sorry you took it that way. my point is that this responsibility was endowed to us by evolution, and is therefore not unnatural. any choices a human being makes, good or bad, are "natural." maybe your misunderstanding comes from an assumption that natural = good. this is not the case. in fact, Howard Bloom's excellent book, The Lucifer Principle illustrates the "evil" nature of nature in a very rational manner.
what do you think of bacteria or virii? are they good?
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The problem is that humans are now as far from nature as living tissue on the metal endoskeleton.
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"scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers"
How exactly is this "a new way"? I'm pretty sure there have been tsunami's and other extreme weather conditions for quite some time that are capable of carry live organisms hundreds or thousands of miles from where they started.
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Two different ways. The percentage of the volume of stuff swept out to see that doesn't sink, rot, or break up within a few weeks through natural causes is orders of magnitude larger today than even a century ago. Some of that debris is larger than anything previously existing as well.
The reason those two points are so important is that it doesn't matter if a single Japanese soldier crab is carried across the ocean on storm debris, or even if a hundred of them are br
Re:Attention, "Fittest": (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the concern here is mostly due to the amount of man-made debris, thus increasing the odds of invasive species transfer to well beyond what would have been found in nature. Just because "survival of the fittest" is the way nature works, doesn't mean that trying to spur on a battle royal of all the world's species is a good thing.
But humans have been doing this since we wandered off the Savannah. Other animals have been doing this since life developed cell membranes.
Nothing to see, move along.
I really, really wish the various governmental departments involved in this would stop tarting this up as some Godzilla-spawned catastrophe. The hundreds of thousands of ship hulls that have discharged ballast water in foreign ports for the past 5 centuries have done more to speed this sort of thing than one tsunami. Not everything is the end of the world, even if you can get more funding that way.
Invasive Species are No Problem for Nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Start surviving....NOW!
Sincerely, Nature.
Hmmm, you know Nature is not afraid of what will happen when these unnaturally treated pieces of wood acts as rafts for any species to traverse an ocean. Perhaps you should share some genuine concern for the effect it will have on humans. Case studies you might care to research: kudzu [wikipedia.org], zebra mussel [wikipedia.org], Asian carp [wikipedia.org] and actually a lot of organisms like rats and weeds that currently traverse the Americas were brought over accidentally on ships. The full effect of them is lost to time and the Native American's knowledge of what used to be available.
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Adapting to new environments isn't just for other species.
Re:Invasive Species are No Problem for Nature (Score:4, Funny)
Adapting to new environments isn't just for other species.
It's the law.
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2 of your 3 examples were *intentionally* introduced. Add snakeheads and various cichlid species to your list... and the snake issue in the everglades, etc.
More "naturally caused" introductions - like a piece of flotsam/jetsam floating across the ocean - are just that - natural.
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Perhaps you should share some genuine concern for the effect it will have on humans.
Is Hawaii getting overrun by frogs? I saw a clip few years ago about frogs are not native to Hawaii, a retired couple moved to the islands but lately it has become very noisy with so many frogs croaking at night. This was example about concern of impact on native wildlife and on native crops, even for other lands, which can have huge economic impact of local farming. Also regarding "jet set" wildlife, is growing python population in Florida.
"break the earth's natural barriers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"break the earth's natural barriers" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not really. A tree can easily be far larger (have you *seen* a California Redwood?), and those things fall into rivers, which lead to the ocean, which leads to...
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Not really. A tree can easily be far larger (have you *seen* a California Redwood?), and those things fall into rivers, which lead to the ocean, which leads to...
Waterlogged trees sinking to the bottom of the ocean and rotting a short distance from where they entered it.
a big damn sock made of treated wood that won't absorb water, and therefore won't sink or rot, and will happily float across an ocean with passengers is something entirely different.
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Sure. But giant washes of trees in the 'near recent past' aren't. And they have dug the remains of those along the east and west coast of the americas, europe, asia and africa from each continent. Seems that nature does a fine job of introducing species on it's own.
Re:"break the earth's natural barriers" (Score:5, Funny)
but any different than floating tree trunks or coconut shells?
Have you ever tried to tie a boat up to a floating coconut?
Re:"break the earth's natural barriers" (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever tried to tie a boat up to a floating coconut?
A laden or unladen boat?
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Untreated wood will absorb water, sink, and then rot without getting far.
Treated wood will not absorb water, won't sink, won't rot and will float across the ocean with passengers.
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So that explains palm trees in Scotland? They've apparently been there a while.
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They aren't actually palm, they are cabbage trees that were imported from New Zealand. Key word *imported*.
Maybe patent officers think it's new (Score:4, Insightful)
Tsunamis have been happening for a few billion years, and moving stuff around for just as long. Scientists realize that.
Re:Maybe patent officers think it's new (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that the invasive species are hitchiking a ride on "a floating dock the size of a boxcar". This is new man-made intervention.
Re:Maybe patent officers think it's new (Score:5, Insightful)
The size of the vehicle is relatively unimportant as long as it floats. A tree might even be better since it could be eaten on the way by many travelers, whereas a human made dock probably has treated would that isn't edible.
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The world had a lot more trees before we showed up and cut them down. Said trees don't stand up to a tsunami and in some cases are larger than a box car.
A tree in an ocean will rapidly absorb water, and then sink like a stone and rot without getting far.
Treated wood won't absorb nearly as much water as quickly, won't rot either, and will float across the ocean with passengers.
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You keep posting this. Where do you get this wood treatment? 'cause I'm getting tired of having to re-treat my deck.
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Barnacles and mussels usually don't grow on trees.
Incorrect.
Barnacles and mussels will grow on anything that sits still long enough. Trees, houses, boats, stuff treated with chemicals that require hazmat suits to apply. Anything. Anything at all.
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You think that large trees never got lost to Tsunamis? With no humanity around to alter the ecology, forests often went right up to the beach. I bet dozens or even thousands of full trees were lost to tidal waves long ago. They would be ideal methods for species transfer.
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The fact that it's manmade is the only reason it was recognized as tsunami debris to begin with.
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I think the point is that the invasive species are hitchiking a ride on "a floating dock the size of a boxcar". This is new man-made intervention.
True, but such a raft being non-man-made is entirely within the realm of possibility. Some sort of beaver damn gets washed away, collects some other low-density debris on its way to the ocean, floats like a champ, could easily make it across an ocean. It could even be something as simple as a bird nest. We're not the only creatures to construct things that can float. So I still categorize this under "natural".
Re:Maybe patent officers think it's new (Score:5, Insightful)
That was my guy reaction, too.
But, huge GOBS of stuff that can float a REALLY long time *HASN'T* been around that long. MAYBE a tree uprooted might make it across the pacific... or maybe it would be gobbled up or weighted down by stuff in the water before it made it across the ocean.
But a weather treated pier? Boats? Weather treated lumber for homes? Plastics? I'd think those might be more likely to make it across the ocean.
Re:Maybe patent officers think it's new (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
Stuff that invasive species would've lived on decomposed or deteriorated before they made it too far from their shores (or sank - waterlogged wood from trees does that). It's only in relatively modern times would something that originated somewhere be cast off and arrive at a whole new continent a year or more later still intact...
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Seems to me boats have been around for years, and likewise docks. Okay, they used to use tar or similar to seal them, but it must have worked. I mean, Columbus did make it across the Atlantic, and he wasn't even the first.
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OK, everybody who thinks this a new phenomena go out and read Charles Mann's book 1491 [wikipedia.org].
tl;dr this sort of thing (human introduction of foreign species) has been going on for tens of thousands of years.
Nothing to see here, move along.
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Can you say "teak"? Sure you can....
Note that if you "weather-treat" a teak pier, you'll just make the wood MORE vulnerable to salt-water damage.
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Teak is pretty dense. In fact if you take a as-cut piece of teak it'll sink in water.
To sink in fresh, pure water at 4c, wood has to have a specific gravity of 1 or higher. True ironwoods meet that requirement. Teak is not an ironwood [simetric.co.uk].
As salt water is ~3.5% denser [hypertextbook.com] than fresh water at the same temperature, something that doesn't sink in fresh water isn't going to sink in salt water under the same conditions.
That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to find a particular piece of teak that is heavier than 1 (though this is highly unlikely, teak typically tops out around .75) due to specific g
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Docks Are Unnaturally Treated to Resist Water (Score:5, Insightful)
Tsunamis have been happening for a few billion years, and moving stuff around for just as long. Scientists realize that.
The problem are the man-made materials and treated woods that will survive an ocean voyage where all other natural materials would not.
When a floating dock the size of a boxcar washed up on a sandy beach in Oregon
Docks survive for so long in water because the wood has to be treated or they would blister, bloat and split and become waterlogged. As a result, when one comes loose it can act as a raft indefinitely. Same goes for plastics and foam that might have been used on houses. If you threw an untreated tree or vegetation in the ocean, it would simply never make it.
All of this will become a moot point, however, when the great pacific garbage patch [wikipedia.org] finally reaches both shores and enables all water based organisms to freely traverse from Asia to North America.
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1) where does "driftwood" come from then? I'm nearly certain that land-species (to say nothing of aquatic ones) have been migrating all over the world through all sorts of avenues probably about as likely or frequent as the washing up of what happens-this-time-to-be-a-manmade-object.
2) Not sure if you were joking, if so my apologies in advance for taking you literally. Of course, anyone who is interested in facts is aware that the 'great pacific garbage patch' (a colossal and deliberately sensational over
Answers (Score:5, Interesting)
1) where does "driftwood" come from then? I'm nearly certain that land-species (to say nothing of aquatic ones) have been migrating all over the world through all sorts of avenues probably about as likely or frequent as the washing up of what happens-this-time-to-be-a-manmade-object.
I grew up around 10,000 lakes and was taught that burning driftwood is a very bad idea as it contains chlorine which is, in part, why they look bone white. If a tree falls into water and becomes driftwood, it usually loses its outer layer of bark and all of its leaves. On top of that, any animal that doesn't like chlorine probably wouldn't survive on it. Go pick up a piece of driftwood and look for barnacles ... usually all you'll find are ants and insects that have inhabited it after it washes back up. And, like you would assume, long ago anything that could live in driftwood has probably long ago made the journey by chance. So the key difference with docks is that they are often loaded with barnacles. Many of them that are in bays or calm enough water are floating boxes of wood that are chained together and simply anchored in the beach. They are flat, they often contain tons of organisms seeking shelter on the beach and when they are in water, they often have one side exposed to air (or they wouldn't be used as docks). Sure, some of these have come loose over time but what you had was thousands of them during the tsunami. So that's why the scientists are concerned and, given the large number of objects you can imagine, they may have good reason to be concerned. I don't think anyone's suggesting you quit your job and walk up and down the shore line throwing GPS devices down for the US to nuke from space but locals should take note of strange new insects or anything if they notice them.
2) Not sure if you were joking, if so my apologies in advance for taking you literally. Of course, anyone who is interested in facts is aware that the 'great pacific garbage patch' (a colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement) is an area of sea where the density of microscopic plastic particulates is 'as high as' a single-digit number per cubic meter of water. I know a lot of people were fooled by environmentalists' clever 'accidental (?) misappropriation' of a picture of some plastic trash floating in the water into thinking that's what the patch is. It's effectively some water where there's a little more plastic DUST.
I was not joking and I would like to simply point out that what you call "plastic dust" is actually matter and some of it is solid and was not there a hundred years ago. I cheated and I didn't say when this transformation was complete so I could be talking about fifty years or five hundred years from now -- on the other hand I also didn't say which animals and some of them don't need a solid land bridge and are perfectly capable of swimming and have adventured far and wide up the and down the Asian coast. Others are insects that just might need something solid in water to lay eggs on and then a food source. Also, let's not make this sound like some nice homogenous even flowing plastic -- it's full of garbage and shit bigger than your "dust" [nationalgeographic.com] (and that's a Natgeo album, not some treehugger crap). The fact is that unless we stop dumping, at some point it's going to get full and solid enough to start ejecting crap into the currents that line the shores of continent(s) and that's when you will need to take notice of transcontinental species migration.
Knowledge is power. France is bacon.
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My work here is dung.
No shit.
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Of course, anyone who is interested in facts is aware that the 'great pacific garbage patch' (a colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement) is an area of sea where the density of microscopic plastic particulates is 'as high as' a single-digit number per cubic meter of water. I know a lot of people were fooled by environmentalists' clever 'accidental (?) misappropriation' of a picture of some plastic trash floating in the water into thinking that's what the patch is. It's effectively some water where there's a little more plastic DUST.
Anyone who has spent time on the Oregon coast knows from personal experience that sea garbage is a real problem. Sure the trash gyre is mostly made up of very small particles, but this actually increases the degredation of the plastics into toxic by-products such as bisphenol A, PCBs, and derivatives of polystyrene. Also though it may be a low density of trash on a per km^2 basis, the size of it has lead scientists to estimate that there is 100 million tons of garbage. I don't think that it is a "coloss
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All of this will become a moot point, however, when the great pacific garbage patch finally reaches both shores and enables all water based organisms to freely traverse from Asia to North America.
Right, because a patch with the density of 5.1kg of material per square km, and whose size estimate (by non-media and non-biased advocacy groups) is about twice the size of Hawaii, is totally gonna form a thousands-of-km-long land bridge that animals can just stroll right over between Asia and N. America.
I'm not saying the garbage patch isn't an ugly testament to the worst aspects of human activity -- certainly it is -- but at least restrain from spouting nonsense that borders on science fiction. Unless
There has never been a tsunami before (Score:2, Insightful)
But scientists worried it represented a whole new way for invasive species of seaweed, crabs and other marine organisms to break the earth's natural barriers
There has never been a tsunami before? WTF?
A very invasive species (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A very invasive species (Score:5, Funny)
That's OK. They're into you.
Right.... (Score:3, Insightful)
a "New Way" eh? Newly thought about, newly discovered, but, hardly new. I am pretty sure species have moved via tsunami for a long time now. "Drifting on ocean currents" itself isn't even a "new way" for a species to spread.
This "new way" sounds similar to the way some young people each year get the impression that they just invented spanking their sexual partner? ("OMG she actually likes it, can you believe that?")
"Possibly future news"? (Score:3)
"Speculative news"? Whatever the case is, or what you might want to call it, it's not "news" as it is a speculative report about what may happen or what may be happening without evidence to show it is happening.
I'm not all for that sort of thing while calling it news. This is hype, not news. It's not even good hype as it suggests ridiculous things like referring to tsunamis as a "whole new way for invasive species...[to mess things up]." Uh no... not new... we "might be" witnessing a dynamic of nature that has been going on since before there was a "man kind." (Before you say anything, "God boy" just don't. It isn't up for discussion.)
Will the do-nothing government do anything? (Score:2, Funny)
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I hope they DON'T do anything. This is nature at work! If we really care about the environment, we should respect natural processes, like Tsunamis, that contribute to the survival of some species, and the extinction of others. This is part of the natural cycle of life. EVERY living species was once an "invasive" species!
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Seemingly hopeless cause (Score:5, Insightful)
San Francisco Bay is already home to a huge number of non-native species according to a local report. Trade through the port of Oakland is one of many culprits. There has been much talk of requiring different treatment of ship ballast tanks (internal tanks flooded with water to lower and stabilize ships).
A one-time shot of tsunami debris is nothing compared to the steady onslaught of commerce.
this size quake/tsunami every few centuries (Score:2)
evolution's rough, get a helmet (Score:2)
This isn't a bad thing in Mother Nature's book. Species that are better adapted have been unable to get to these new habitats due to natural barriers. Now there's a natural event that has brought them in. And now it's time for evolution to get to work. It's not "disrupting" the balance, it's adjusting it.
Countless species have become extinct or had to move to other habitats due to evolution within and from outside their primary habitat. It's not Man's job to decide what species "aren't allowed to take
AKA (Score:2)
The US should be in a bubble, you never know what the filthy sea and the annoying wind might bring up next...
And don't get me started on meteorites!
Oh Great! (Score:3, Funny)
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This is probably how Darwin's finches came about (Score:2)
This is probably how Darwin's finches came about, via a big storm or tsunami along South America's west coast.
Think of the big tsunami in Chile a few years ago. It is in fact perhaps more likely that a tsunami brings more debris than a storm, even if I'm not sure which is more prone to bring out debris into the open sea.
Hopefully no Japanese Hornets are coming (Score:2)
I don't know much about ocean species, but hopefully no Japanese Hornets hitched a ride as well. I'd hate to have them over here.
It is a large insect and adults can be more than 4 centimetres (1.6 in) long, with a wingspan greater than 6 centimetres (2.4 in). ...
Being stung is extremely painful and requires hospital treatment. On average 40 people die every year of anaphylactic shock after having been stung,[1] which makes the Japanese giant hornet the most lethal animal in Japan, as bears kill about ten p
Umm, where are all of the green people now? (Score:2)
I've always hated the whole "saving the planet" "green" concepts. Polluting less and all that is a great way to preserve the current human-likable climate, but that's about it. The planet can handle our measily polluting quite easily.
But here's the exact opposite. Last I checked, tsunamis are perfectly natural events. "invasive species" gaining access to new lands is a perfectly typical historical circumstance. Stopping those species from landing on distant shores amounts to limiting their movements.
St
Surprise ? ... Not. (Score:2)
Tree trunks have been used for harbourage for millennia, and they accumulate sealife like anything else in the sea.
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As a kid my parents walked on the Oregon coast picking up Japanese glass fishing floats that had broken loose from from their nets in storms and made their way here. (You can still search for them now, but most of the floats are now plastic, and there are dedicated collectors and resellers that comb the beaches at 2am with searchlights to get them first so you'd be extremely lucky to find one now.)
Why comb the beaches at 2am? Wouldn't it be easier to just ship a boatload of floats from japan?
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Because the species are INVASIVE! We're being invaded by these Japanese species which will kill all of our native species or, worse yet, mate with them and create some hybrid borg-like plant and we'll all die!
Film at 11.
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The smallest container ships are many times bigger than this dock. And cross in a few days, so they creatures don't have to hold on nearly as long.
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I sure hope no one tries to intervene and prevent this from happening. This is not a man made occurrence, but an entirely natural one.
Right. Pressure-treated wood that doesn't become waterlogged, sink, and rot is completely natural.
Stick a natural log in a tank of water for a couple months. It will absorb water, sink to the bottom of the tank, and then start to rot. It would drift maybe a couple hundred miles in an ocean before that happens. It's not going to be crossing an ocean.
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Stick a natural log in a tank of water for a couple months. It will absorb water, sink to the bottom of the tank, and then start to rot. It would drift maybe a couple hundred miles in an ocean before that happens. It's not going to be crossing an ocean.
Care to cite a source for that factoid?
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By that metric we really shouldn't bother with an endangered species list. However landing invasive species on islands is a