More information: Other species affected

They say that animals can sense that a storm is coming. They run for the hills. They fly away. Still, the massive March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami seems to have done its fair share of damage to wildlife, too. While the human victims in Japan are foremost on our minds these days, animals affected by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami also are an issue. Many animals are dead. Many others need help.

Some sea animals close to shore can be washed up on shore and killed. land animals can be drowned, crushed, or sucked into the ocean. Animals far out enough are usually not affected in the least.

M. Sanjayan of The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, told ScienceInsider that the biggest impact on wildlife would be on shorebirds nesting on small islands throughout the Pacific, rather than on the Japanese mainland. Indeed, the majority of wildlife-related news of the tsunami has come from small Pacific islands such as those in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

While some of the reports are heartening, and many are devasting, more in-depth research into the short- and long-term effects of the tsunami on marine and coastal ecosystems will take much longer. But the 2004 magnitude 9.15 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, and the resulting tsunami that rippled across the Indian Ocean have been extensively studied, and allow us to speculate regarding possible outcomes of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

The Wildlife Trust of India, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare initiated several investigations following the earthquake and tsunami to assess their impact on wildlife. Overall, they found that damage to wildlife populations was generally limited on the mainland, and slightly worse on the islands. Particularly hard-hit, however, were coral reef systems. Several beaches were washed away, and freshwater habitats were inundated with saltwater. While most of these ecosystems were eventually able to rebound, problems did occur.

For example, one mainland wildlife sanctuary became flooded with saltwater and covered with sand, making is impossible for the various plant-eating ungulates (hoofed animals) to graze. Even worse, with seawater comes toxic pollution.

And there were probably other invaders, as well. Furry ones. Large dead trees from distant islands were found washed up on mainland beaches. While there was no danger to beach ecosystems from the trees themselves, since they were dead, they may have carried some critters with them that would eventually colonize mainland coasts. It is well-known that rodents, reptiles, and insects are quite capable of setting up camp in new environments after rafting across the sea.

As we can already tell from the Japan earthquake, birds are particularly vulnerable to tsunamis. But in the 2004 tsunami, it wasn’t all bad news for the birds! In fact, after the seawater receded, it left quite a bit of silt and sediment behind. Some of that sediment settled into pre-existing lagoons and creeks, making them much shallower.