Japan Tsunami Ghost Boat Washes Ashore in Washington State?

A small boat encrusted with marine life that washed onto a Washington State beach may have crossed the Pacific from the March 2011 tsunami off Japan.

Ecology Department spokeswoman Linda Kent says the boat that washed ashore Monday night at Ocean Shores was covered with barnacles and seaweed. It was taken to a state parks maintenance facility where the marine life is being removed and tested for invasive species.

Kent says it's obvious the boat was floating a long time, but there's no indication yet where it came from.

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Another boat was found last week near Long Beach, also covered with marine life, according to The Associated Press. It also was taken to a state parks facility and no sign of its origin was found.

Kent says there has been no confirmed tsunami debris since last year. There have been many reports of from Japan's 2011 tsunami, including one last November that debris had formed a massive "trash island" the size of Texas floating in the Pacific and was headed for U.S. coastlines, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed the story is not true.

The tsunami washed about 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean, about 70 percent of that trash sank off the coast. The remaining wreckage is scattered, not fused together in some type of floating junk field.

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