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Tsunami Shrine

June 10, 2011

Marine chemist Ken Buesseler pays his respects at Namiwake Shrine outside the city of Sendai, Japan, prior to departing on a cruise to study radiation releases into the ocean from the Fukushima power plant. The current shrine buildings were constructed in 1920 to commemorate the Jogan tsunami in 869 A.D., which inundated a region very similar to that flooded in March after the magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan. The land on which the shrine sits was spared in both events. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)