The Globe's Oregon Backwash

"the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of millions of tons of small bits of plastic floating in the northern Pacific"

"Tsunami-borne dock may bring Japanese species to Oregon; US officials fear tiny creatures may affect coastline" by Jeff Barnard  |  Associated Press, June 08, 2012

NEWPORT, Ore. - When the tsunami hit the northern coast of Japan last year, the waves ripped four dock floats the size of freight train boxcars from their pilings in the fishing port of Misawa and turned them over to the whims of wind and currents.

One floated up on a nearby island. Two have not been seen again. But one made an incredible journey across 5,000 miles of ocean that ended this week on a popular Oregon beach.

Along for the ride were hundreds of millions of organisms, including a tiny species of crab, a species of algae, and a little starfish, all native to Japan, that worry scientists should they spread out on the West Coast.

“This is a very clear threat,’’ said John Chapman, a research scientist at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., where the dock washed up early Tuesday. “It’s incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next.’’

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While scientists expect much of the floating debris to follow the currents to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of millions of tons of small bits of plastic floating in the northern Pacific, tsunami debris that can catch the wind is making its way to North America. In recent weeks, a soccer ball washed up in Alaska, and a Harley Davidson motorcycle in a shipping container was found in British Columbia, Canada....  

And a ship they sunk.

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What bothers me is the newspaper -- for some reason -- is concerned about invasive species when Fukushima is still spewing radiation and the life itself is under threat of extinction if building 4 tips over.

"Organisms ride debris to the US; Invasive species loosed by tsunami" by Jeff Barnard  |  Asspciated Press, June 10, 2012

NEW YORK - 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.  

Didn't anyone check it for radiation?

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.

“We know extinctions occur with invasions,’’ said John Chapman, assistant professor of fisheries and invasive species specialist at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. “This is like arrows shot into the dark. Some of them could hit a mark.’’  

And we have all the graves from all the wars to prove it.

The global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports.  

Yeah, that whole idea really didn't work out to well in so many ways. 

But the marine invasion has been going on since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond, Calif.

Now, hotspots like San Francisco Bay amount to a “global zoo’’ of invasive species and perhaps 500 plants and animals from foreign shores have established in US marine waters, said James Carlton, professor of marine sciences at Williams College. They come mostly from ship hulls and the water ships take on as ballast, but also get dumped into bays from home aquariums.

The costs quickly mount into the untold billions of dollars. Mitten crabs from China eat baby Dungeness crabs that are one of the region’s top commercial fisheries. Spartina, a ropey seaweed from Europe, chokes commercial oyster beds. Shellfish plug the cooling water intakes of power plants.  

Related: The Day Boston Went Dry

Yeah, then it will be a major problem.

Kelps and tiny shrimp-like creatures change the food web that fish, marine mammals, and even humans depend on....

That's odd; no mention of the Asian carp.

It is too early for scientists to know how much Japanese tsunami debris may add to the invasive species here....

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What other garbage has the Globe for us:

"Gay Oregon man says doctor tried changing his orientation; Therapist focused on sexuality, not his depression" by Steven DuBois  |  Associated Press, May 24, 2012

PORTLAND, Ore. - Max Hirsh's experience is the subject of an ethics complaint filed this month by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which plans to take the same action in other states as part of a national campaign to stop therapists from trying to make gay people straight.  

SPLC has been outed as a Zionist tool of agenda-advancing division and propaganda, sorry.

The complaint sent to the American Psychological Association and the Oregon Psychiatric Association arrived in what has become something of a watershed month for opponents of the form of psychotherapy. California legislators advanced a bill to the state senate that would ban children younger than 18 from receiving conversion therapy.

And Dr. Robert Spitzer, a prominent retired psychiatrist, apologized to the gay community last week for a “fatal flaw’’ in his influential 2001 study that found conversion therapy to be a successful option for some people.

Hirsh’s experience with the psychiatrist, who he was seeing because he was depressed, could not be independently verified. The Southern Poverty Law Center blacked out the doctor’s name in a copy of the complaint supplied to journalists, and Hirsh and his lawyer would not identify the doctor. Christine Sun, the law center’s deputy legal director, said the psychological associations require confidentiality when investigating complaints....

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"5 dead in apparent murder-suicide in Oregon" Associated Press, May 24, 2012

SALEM, Ore. - Police were investigating the deaths of three Oregon children and their parents as an apparent murder-suicide Wednesday after authorities found the bodies of the children and their mother at a burned home and their father’s in a car hours later.

The deceased girls were identified as infant Sefi Lazukin, 1-year-old Zoe Lazukin, and 3-year-old Angelica Lazukin. Their mother was identified as 26-year-old Natalya Lazukin.

A sixth person whose body was found on the street a quarter mile north of the house was identified Wednesday afternoon as 21-year-old Devin Matlock of Salem.

Lewman said Matlock was killed by two blows to the head. His cause of death was originally suspected to be a hit-and-run, but Lewman said Matlock’s injuries weren’t consistent with those a pedestrian would suffer when hit by a car.

Salem police Lieutenant Dave Okada said police are treating Matlock’s death as a separate investigation from the bodies found in the house.

Police say they don’t have details about the parents’ relationship.

The woman and children were discovered early Tuesday when firefighters responded to a fire in a working-class neighborhood of old homes and apartment complexes.

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Update: More tsunami debris lands on US shores