Ghost fishing boat returns to port ten years after tsunami washed it away

By Mirror | 3yrs ago | 2 min read

It had fish and crabs in on-board puddles [Photo: Newsflash]

A fishing boat that went missing during a powerful Japanese tsunami has been found 10 years later on a Pacific island. The small fishing vessel disappeared from the city of Kesennuma in the north-eastern Japanese region of Tohoku following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, caused a tsunami with waves of up to 40.5 metres that killed over 10,000 people. It also swept the boat away. Almost 10 years later the fishing boat has been found off the coast of an island 404 miles south of Japan called Hachijo.

The boat reappeared after nearly ten years [Photo: Newsflash]

Local fishermen checked the boat's registration and confirmed that it belonged to the fishing cooperative in Kesennuma, The Mainichi reported. The boat was covered in coral which sparked speculation about where it might have passed through.

The 5.5-metre (18- foot) boat, which also had fish and crabs swimming in puddles inside, was towed to the coast by the local authorities. A local resident and ocean expert, who has not been named, told The Mainichi: "It's possible that after the boat was swept away to an area near the US west coast, it moved to Southeast Asia on the North Equatorial Current, and then washed up here on the Kuroshio Current."

The tsunami devastated large parts of the Miyagi prefecture [Photo: AFP via Getty Images]

The boat is not the only object to resurface after a long time at sea. In April 2012 a couple living on Middleton island in the Gulf of Alaska found a football which had markings on it that indicated it belonged to a school in Iwate, Japan. In May the same year a Harley-Davidson lost in the tsunami washed up on a Canadian island in a large white container.