Japan sea sediments indicate past geological disturbances

BBC : Earlier this year the German research vessel Sonne traveled to the waters near Japan to map and retrieve sediment samples from the sea floor. An international team of scientists from Germany, Japan, and Switzerland will try to see if there are any links between past earthquakes and disturbances in the ocean bed identified in the samples. Earthquakes can stir up silts, mud, and rock on the ocean floor and trigger landslides. “We were able to get a record of at least three sedimentary mobilisation events that potentially suggest the occurrence of previous large, possibly 2011-Tohoku-type, earthquakes; and we are now working on identifying these events and then eventually dating them,” said Michael Strasser of ETH Zürich in Switzerland. From their research, the scientists hope to better understand the development of earthquakes and tsunamis and anticipate potential damage.