Tsunami boat washed up in US found to have live fish on board

Since a tsunami struck Japan more than two years ago, a variety of debris has washed up on US beaches - including large boat docks and a soccer ball, found in Washington state's Olympic National Park, from the Otsuchi Soccer Club.

But they have been trumped by the discovery of six live fish, stowed away in a water-filled bait box aboard a 6-metre Japanese boat that washed up on the Long Beach Peninsula in southwestern Washington.

Researchers had already seen live crabs, sea stars and algae clinging to debris, but they had never encountered live fish that drifted on their own from Asia, said John Chapman, who specialises in aquatic biological invasions at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Centre.

"This comes out there on the far end of the bell curve, I think," Chapman said. "We know that it does happen that things disperse like that, but it's on a million-year scale, not within a century or anything like that."

Five of the fish were euthanised to prevent the introduction of a new invasive species along the US west coast. But the other is on display at the Seaside Aquarium in Seaside, Oregon.

Aquarium curator Keith Chandler said he was called to City Hall in nearby Long Beach, not long after the boat washed up at the end of last month and shown the surviving fish - known popularly as striped beakfish or a barred parrotfish - swimming in a bucket.