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A small boat thought to have journeyed across the Pacific Ocean from Japan after the March 2011 tsunami has washed up in Washington this week. The boat, which is encrusted with unusual-looking barnacles, is believed to have travelled an incredible 6,500 kilometres (4,559 miles) across the ocean in the three years since the tsunami and earthquake disaster struck east Japan.

State officials are checking the boat, which drifted ashore in Ocean Shores on Monday, to confirm its origin. It’s the second boat to wash ashore in Washington state in two weeks.

▼ The little boat is thought to have journeyed 6,500 kilometres (about 4,000 miles) from the east coast of Japan to the coast of Washington state.

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Debris from the tsunami has washed up on North American shores before. In 2012, a soccer ball that drifted to Alaska was retraced to its owner, a Japanese schoolboy from Rikuzentakata, a coastal town in the Tohoku area. A few months later, an entire boat dock from Misawa, northern Japan, appeared on the coast of Oregon.

Officials said that this boat has Asian-looking writing on it, and they have asked the Japanese Consulate in Seattle to help decipher it.

▼ Send us a picture, guys, and we’ll tell you if it’s Japanese writing or not!

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▼ The boat is encrusted with these creepy barnacles.

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▼ If the boat is confirmed as having come from Japan, it will have made quite a journey!

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Source: Itai News, Daily Mail
Images: Ocean Shores Police Department, via Itai News