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The Fungus Among Us: Cryptococcus Gattii and the Tsunami
At 26:28 · chapter starts 25:10
If one story crystallises how far-reaching the 1964 earthquake's consequences were, it's the fungus. Cryptococcus gattii is a microscopic fungus native to the tropics, where it grows on rotting wood and can cause fatal infections in humans. It has no business being in Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. Yet around the turn of the 20th century, a ship travelling from Brazil to Vancouver discharged its ballast water into the Pacific — and with it, the fungus [1] — Chuck "Cryptococcus gattii, a tropical fungus that only grows on rotting wood, was introduced to Pacific Northwest waters via ship ballast from Br…" 25:05 . It survived in the seawater, largely unnoticed, for decades. Then the 1964 tsunami came and drove it inland, spreading it across new terrestrial habitats. In its new environment, the fungus began adapting. For 30 years it worked, quietly and invisibly. By the 1990s, it had successfully adapted to life on land in the Pacific Northwest and began infecting people — triggering a mysterious outbreak that baffled public health officials, because by all logic, Cryptococcus gattii simply should not be there. An epidemiologist eventually traced the chain: ship ballast, seawater survival, tsunami dispersal, three decades of adaptation. The 1964 earthquake, in ways nobody anticipated, was still having consequences 30 years later.
A tropical fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, introduced to Pacific Northwest waters via ship ballast from Brazil, was spread inland by the 1964 Alaska tsunami and adapted over 30 years to infect people on land by the 1990s.
