7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
Critters: Diversity was ‘jaw-dropping’ Dredging: Army
Corps will hold
public hearing in
Astoria on Oct. 17
Continued from Page 1A
“It’s a bit of what we call
ecological roulette,” said lead
author James Carlton, a marine
sciences professor at Williams
College in Williamstown,
Massachusetts.
It will be years before sci-
entists know if the 289 Japa-
nese species thrive in their new
home and crowd out natives.
The researchers roughly esti-
mated that a million creatures
traveled 4,800 miles across
the Pacifi c Ocean to reach the
West Coast, including hun-
dreds of thousands of mussels.
Invasive species pose a
major problem worldwide
with plants and animals thriv-
ing in areas where they don’t
naturally live. Marine inva-
sions in the past have hurt
native farmed shellfi sh, eroded
the local ecosystem, caused
economic losses and spread
disease-carrying species, said
Bella Galil, a marine biologist
with the Steinhardt Museum
of Natural History in Tel Aviv,
Israel, who wasn’t part of the
study.
A magnitude 9 earthquake
off the coast of Japan triggered
a tsunami on March 11, 2011,
that swept boats, docks, buoys
and other man-made materi-
als into the Pacifi c. The debris
drifted east with an armada
of living creatures, some that
gave birth to new generations
John W. Chapman
Marine sea slugs from a derelict vessel from Iwate Prefec-
ture, Japan, washed ashore in Oregon in 2015. Research-
ers reported Thursday that nearly 300 species of fish,
mussels and other sea creatures hitchhiked across the
Pacific Ocean on debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami,
washing ashore alive in the United States.
while at sea.
“The diversity was some-
what jaw-dropping,” Carlton
said. “Mollusks, sea anemo-
nes, corals, crabs, just a wide
variety of species, really a
cross-section of Japanese
fauna.”
The researchers collected
and analyzed the debris that
reached the West Coast and
Hawaii over the last fi ve
years, with new pieces arriv-
ing Wednesday in Washington.
The debris fl owed across the
North Pacifi c current, as other
objects do from time to time,
before it moved north with the
Alaska current or south with
the California current. Most hit
Oregon and Washington state.
Last year, a small boat from
Japan reached Oregon with
20 good-sized fi sh inside, a
kind of yellowtail jack native
to the western Pacifi c, Carl-
ton said. Some of the fi sh are
still alive in an Oregon aquar-
ium. Earlier, an entire fi shing
boat — the Saisho-Maru —
arrived intact with fi ve of the
same 6-inch fi sh swimming
around inside. The boat is on
display at the Columbia River
Maritime Museum.
Co-author Gregory Ruiz,
a Smithsonian marine ecol-
ogist, is especially interested
in a Japanese parasite in the
gills of mussels. Elsewhere
in the world, these parasites
have taken root and hurt oyster
and mussel harvests and they
hadn’t been seen before on the
West Coast.
The researchers note
another huge factor in this fl o-
tilla: plastics.
Decades ago, most of the
debris would have been wood
and that would have degraded
over the long ocean trip, but
now most of the debris —
buoys, boats, crates and pallets
— are made of plastic and that
survives, Carlton said. And so
the hitchhikers survive, too.
“It was the plastic debris
that allowed new species to
survive far longer than we ever
thought they would,” Carlton
said.
James Byers, a marine
ecologist at the University of
Georgia in Athens, who wasn’t
part of the study, praised the
authors for their detective
work. He said in an email that
the migration was an odd mix
of a natural trigger and human
aspects because of the plastics.
“The fact that communi-
ties of organisms survived out
in the open ocean for long time
periods (years in some cases)
is amazing,” he wrote.
Continued from Page 1A
“We place it along erod-
ing shorelines, in the river,”
Stokke said. “We try to
place material near shore to
support the jetties and shore-
lines north and south of the
Columbia.”
Since 1890, the Army
Corps estimates more than
1 billion cubic yards of sed-
iment has been dredged
between the mouth of the
Columbia and Vancou-
ver. The Army Corps does
about half the annual dredg-
ing through its vessels the
Essayons and Yaquina,
while also contracting with
companies.
Getting full
About 15 of the 20 or
so designated upland sites
where dredge spoils are
placed are at or nearing
capacity, said Jeff Henon,
a spokesman for the Army
Corps.
The Army Corps is in
the scoping stages of a new
20-year channel mainte-
nance plan, gathering pub-
lic comment on strategies
to place the dredged mate-
rials off-channel, and on
ways to reduce the need for
dredging.
“We defi nitely already do
this with pile dikes or wing
dams,” Stokke said. “They
direct river fl ow toward
the channel, which keeps a
faster fl ow. We have over
200 structures. We’ve been
constructing them since the
1880s.”
Sponsoring the new
20-year plan with the Army
Corps are the Port of Port-
land and Washington ports
in Vancouver, Woodland,
Kalama and Longview.
The Ports each sponsored a
project fi nished in 2010 to
deepen the Columbia ship-
ping channel to 43 feet.
The Army Corps is hold-
ing public hearings along
the river to gather comments
on how the channel should
be maintained. On Oct. 17,
they will be in Astoria.
Stroke: ‘Within a minute after we got it out, he could start moving his left arm’
Continued from Page 1A
“He was fi ghting me,
because he wasn’t thinking quite
right,” she said. “He wanted me
to help him up. I tried one time,
two times. I said, ‘Ron, I would
like you to lay down on the fl oor
so I can look at you and see
what’s going on.’”
Leino, who had worked
at a hospital in Alaska, asked
Paapke to smile and lift his arm
or leg. By then, she knew he
was having a stroke and called
911.
Within
fi ve
minutes,
responders with the Lewis and
Clark Fire District arrived and
stabilized Paapke until Medix
took over . Within an hour of the
stroke, Paapke was at Colum-
bia Memorial Hospital.
At 5:30 p.m., Dr. Stew-
art Weber, a vascular neurol-
ogist at OHSU, received an
alert on his pager from Colum-
bia Memorial , where a doctor
determined Paapke was having
a sizable stroke. He connected
via the hospital’s telemedicine
program and examined Paapke.
A brain scan showed a blood
clot running 12 centimeters up
Paapke’s carotid artery from his
neck to his brain.
“We decided that he would
probably benefi t the most from
getting clot-busting medica-
tion,” Weber said.
Paapke was given a shot of
tPA, or tissue plasminogen acti-
vator, used to dissolve blood
clots. Only about 5 percent of
stroke patients receive the drug,
which needs to be administered
within three hours. But the clot
wasn’t dissolved by the medi-
cation, making Paapke a good
candidate for a newer treatment
at OHSU known as a mechani-
cal thrombectomy.
Paapke was fl own to Port-
land by Life Flight Network
and by 7:30 p.m. was being
stretchered into OHSU’s emer-
gency department.
an interventional neuroradiolo-
gist at OHSU, inserted a cath-
eter into an artery in Paapke’s
groin, threading it through
his aorta and into the carotid
artery.
“It was fi lled with plaque
from smoking,” Bozorgchami
said of Paapke’s artery. The
doctor inserted a stent mesh
used to reinforce weak vessels.
Within a half-hour, Bozorg-
chami pulled out the stent, and
with it the blood clot, a long,
snaking mass of coagulated
blood cells. It was the largest
blood clot he had pulled out in
six years at OHSU, Bozorgc-
hami said.
“Within a minute after we
got it out, he could start moving
his left arm, which was totally
paralyzed, and give us a thumbs
up,” Weber said. “It was pretty
miraculous, almost an immedi-
ate recovery.”
Prayers
Paapke’s friends and family
prayed for him the entire time
he was gone, Leino said.
“I’m just praying that it con-
tinues to be as great as it’s come
out so far, because his life and
my life could have been com-
pletely different, if everything
didn’t work as smoothly.”
With about a month to go
before his next checkup, Paap-
ke’s goal is to quit smoking
and lose about 5 pounds. Since
being released from the hospi-
tal, he has been going around
thanking the responders with
Lewis and Clark, Medix, Life
Flight, Columbia Memorial
and OHSU whose response he
said was textbook.
“I’d like to thank everyone
involved,” he said. “It was a
great team effort.”
Plaque from smoking
Dr. Hormozd Bozorgchami,
The
Astor Street Opry Company
is proud to announce its
Annual Auction
and Gala
Saturday, November 18
5pm
Astor Street Opry Company Playhouse
129 W. Bond Street
Astoria
This event will feature a live jazz band,
RJ Marx Jazz Quartet, and other live performances
featuring ASOC’s most favored and talented people!
In addition, we will have a silent and live auction with
lots of great items you will want to purchase to complete
your holiday shopping! And the food...well, we are
having the best, of course!
$ 20 per person • $ 35 per couple
Tickets online at
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3084324
Get your tickets now and come kick off the
holiday season with us while supporting
the local arts!
For information about this and other shows,find us at
www.astorstreetoprycompany.com
or email us at info@atorstreetoprycompany.com