Fishing boat washes up in Japan almost 10 years after it was lost in tsunami

A fishing boat has reappeared on the shores of Japan almost a decade after it was swept out into the Pacific – and possibly as far as the west coast of the United States – by a huge tsunami that killed thousands of people and triggered a nuclear disaster.

The tiny boat was found off Hachijo island earlier this month, nine years and nine months after it disappeared into the ocean off Kesennuma, a town 650km [403 miles] to the north.

The March 2011 tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0-earthquake, killed more than 18,000 people and destroyed a large swathe of coastline.

A local fishing cooperative confirmed that the 5.5-metre fibreglass boat had once belonged to the Kesennuma fishing fleet after checking its registration number, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.

The large quantity of coral found attached to the boat’s interior has prompted speculation about where it had drifted to before ending up on Hachijo, located about 300km south of Tokyo.

One local expert cited by the Mainichi said it could have been swept across the Pacific to an area near the US west coast, after which it was taken to south-east Asia on the north equatorial current, which flows east to west. The north-flowing Kuroshio current could have then brought the vessel “home” to Japan, the expert added.

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Many items of debris made the long journey across the Pacific after the tsunami, whose height and power contributed to the reactor meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

In April 2012, just over a year after the triple disaster, a couple living on Middleton island in the Gulf of Alaska found a soccer ball whose markings identified it as belonging to a school in Iwate, one of three prefectures that were hardest hit by the tsunami.

The same month, a US coastguard sank a fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska that had drifted from Japan, after deeming it a hazard to shipping.

In May that year, a Harley-Davidson lost in the tsunami washed up on a Canadian island about 6,430km away. The rusty motorcycle was found in a large white container, and its owner, Ikuo Yokoyama, was identified through the its number plate.