Knowledge

During a tsunami, do whales and sharks go crashing into whatever town the wave hits?

No, don’t worry about some great white swimming down the road during a tsunami. Great whites are not likely to find themselves in cities.

Tsunamis do strange things, but not Hollywood movie things. Usually, whales and sharks swim deep — Out where the tsunami is actually creating itself, they’re barely visible – small waves in the ocean. It’s only near shore in shallow water where the massive wave appears.

Smart fish go deeper. A small number of small fish get washed ashore along the beach. There have been some accounts following the 2011 Japan tsunami of “hundreds of dead fish” at Midway Island, but no whales and sharks promenading along Main Street.

At times, tsunamis move the sharks from their typical habitats – They will go elsewhere to seek food. Some of the smaller ones will wind up on land, but they’d die there, not hunting you between buildings.

The water is the biggest danger, and not whatever is swimming in it.

No. Well… maybe you’ll find a small juvenile shark but one that’s been dashed against the rocks and buildings and is now currently in no shape to be swimming through the streets. Pictures like this:

are photoshops. That’s not to say sharks haven’t shown up in the streets after a flood but not a tsunami.

You see if you were out at sea, or in the deep ocean, when a tsunami passes it would be a small bump. A small, but fast moving wave would travel along. It’s only when it gets near the shore that it’s true power can be seen as all that water underneath it starts getting pushed up and you have a fast moving amount of water that has a lot of power behind it coming up on shore and going past it.

This is not a tsunami:

This will probably never happen unless something really big falls into the deep ocean.

A tsunami is like this:

Just a massive amount of water that rushes at you and doesn’t stop.

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