A fishing boat has floated more than 8000 kilometres across the Pacific to become the first piece of Japanese tsunami debris to reach California - more than two years after the event.
An estimated five million tonnes of debris was washed into the ocean by the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that devastated north-eastern Japan on 11 March 2011, killing more than 15,000 people.
United States officials say a barnacle-encrusted six-metre skiff found washed up near the northern Californian coast town of Crescent City has been identified as belonging to a high school in Rikuzentakata, one of the communities worst hit by the tsunami.
It is the first piece of tsunami debris to float across the Pacific and beach in California, the ABC reports.
A 20-metre concrete dock from Japan washed up on a beach in Oregon last year.
