Evaluating the impacts of huge waves on rocky shorelines: an essay review of the book ‘Tsunami – The Underrated Hazard’1

‘Tsunami – The Underrated Hazard’ draws together and summarizes a wealth of information about the nature, impacts and causes of tsunamis. Written from a natural hazards perspective, the book stresses that large tsunamis can affect even protected coasts that have not experienced large tsunamis historically. Many deposits and erosional features described and discussed as tsunami signatures have yet to be linked specifically with tsunamis. Cited references in the book do not necessarily support a tsunami origin for these features, because accepted scientific citation practices have not been followed. Although rocky shorelines in southeastern Australia, the Hawaiian Islands and elsewhere generate and preserve a variety of boulder and block deposits and erosional features, their sediment dynamics and geomorphology are poorly studied, and unequivocal criteria for distinguishing between deposits of storms and tsunamis have yet to be developed. Despite its shortcomings, this book should be on the library shelves of all marine geoscientists who study modern and ancient shorelines. However, it should be used with great circumspection, because the process:product relationships it assumes are equivocal.