A barnacle-encrusted panga boat that washed ashore near Crescent City last week is believed to be the first verifiable remnant of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami to reach California's coast, suggesting more debris swept to sea by the powerful tidal wave may be on the way.
But the 21-foot vessel from the coastal city of Rikuzentakata, which was devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami, is also a rueful reminder of the ties that bind the two cities, located an ocean apart but linked by the waves.
Though far more pronounced in Rikuzentakata, where 1 in every 13 people perished, both cities felt the tsunami's punch.
Work has started on a more than $50 million reconstruction of the boat basin at the Crescent City Harbor, where wave action destroyed the underpinnings of the local fishing industry that day.
In Rikuzentakata, a slow recovery is underway, hindered by the immensity of the devastation and rebuilding costs, and bureaucratic red tape.
About 3,400 of the city's 8,000 homes and apartments were destroyed. The downtown was flattened.
But something about the safe arrival of the small vessel from Rikuzentakata's Takata High School after a journey that spanned two years and 4,800 miles has sparked curiosity and emotion on both shores.
"The reaction from the city is a combination of disbelief and joy," said Amya Miller, an international spokeswoman for Rikuzentakata, which remains in a continual state of emergency.
Troy Nicolini, a National Weather Service meteorologist who inspected the boat as last week as co-chairman of the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group, said it touched him personally, as well.
"I actually live in the tsunami zone, so there is a personal thing for me," said Nicolini, a resident of Fairhaven, situated on a spit of land between Humboldt Bay and the Pacific Ocean near Eureka. "I live in the zone. I have a 10-month-old baby, and I think when I see a boat like that, that was ripped from its moorings and swept across the ocean … it has a personal impact."
His partner in assessing the vessel, Humboldt State University geology Professor Lori Dengler, a founder of the tsunami work group, was among the first foreign scientists to visit Japan's hard-hit Iwate Prefecture in the aftermath of the earthquake and tidal wave.
"It's definitely eerie having been there and having seen it - just being overwhelmed by the damage - and now this connection," she said.
They might have missed even learning of the boat's voyage had it not been for a couple of sharp-eyed Del Norte County sheriff's deputies who observed some unusual activity April 7 on the beach alongside Highway 101 just south of Crescent City, Dengler said. The deputies quickly discovered that some young people had driven a pickup onto the sand with plans to haul the boat from the surf and take it away. The deputies saw the Japanese characters, which marked it as potential tsunami wreckage, and dialed the numbers they had been instructed to call on such an occasion.
A translation of the Japanese markings on the boat quickly linked the vessel to Takata High School. There also were identification numbers and inspection decals indicating the vessel was from Rikuzentakata, which is on the northeastern coast of Honshu.
Dengler posted an item about the boat on the city of Rikuzantakata's Facebook page and, within hours, a teacher from the relocated high school campus confirmed its identity.
The boat's identification must still be authenticated through the Japanese consulate and official government channels, but involved parties believe it will be the first confirmed piece of tsunami debris to reach California.
Whether it heralds an increase in artifacts washing onshore in California remains to be seen, as predictions are difficult and dependent on so many variables, experts said.
But a spike in debris making its way to California had been anticipated by spring of this year, so the boat is "right on target" timewise, said Dengler.
As of April 4, the agency had received 1,691 reports of possible tsunami debris, primarily found in Hawaii and Alaska, though several articles have turned up on California shores.
But only 26 items - including a 185-ton dock that washed ashore on Washington's Olympic Peninsula in December - possessed the kind of individual markings or information that would permit distinct identification and linkage to the tsunami.
There was a boat like the one in Crescent City that came ashore in Washington state last month. Last summer, a 66-foot pier was beached on the Oregon coast. A motorcycle in a foam-lined container landed in British Columbia in June.
A teen in Rikuzentakata has already had a soccer ball returned to him after it washed up in the Gulf of Alaska last year. Signatures from former classmates permitted the couple who found it to trace it back to him. It had become lost when the boy's home was wiped away.
It's still unclear if the boat will find its way back to Japan.
"We are waiting to hear through proper channels … what will happen to the boat," Miller said.
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