The naked eye doesn't make for the most accurate tsunami warning device.

This was brought home in 2007 when a local chef mistook the shimmer of high seas for an approaching tsunami wave headed for Dockyard.

New Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences (BIOS) tsunami expert Jerome Aucan told The Royal Gazette the resulting panic and evacuation of the Dockyard area could have been a lot worse.

"I have been discussing the tsunami scare that Bermuda had a couple of years ago with Mark Guishard of the Bermuda Weather Service," said Dr. Aucan. "It could have created problems. It totally happened because of a lack of education."

To take away some of the guess work (for chefs anyway) out of tsunami prediction, Dr. Aucan is working with others from Bermuda and around the Caribbean to set up a tsunami early warning system.

A similar system was created in the Indian Ocean after an earthquake and tsunami there killed approximately 300,000 people on Boxing Day, 2004. Next month Dr. Aucan and other Bermuda representatives will attend a conference in Martinique to hash out the project.

Tsunamis are defined as a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved, the effects of a tsunami can be devastating.

They are caused by earthquakes, volcanic activity, shifting in the earth's crust and submarine avalanches, and could also be potentially caused by asteroid strikes or detonation of nuclear weapons in the ocean.

The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was caused by an earthquake off of Indonesia that was 9.1 on the Richter scale, an energy release comparable to 23,000 Hiroshima type atomic bombs exploding.

But Dr. Aucan warned that it is not impossible that a tsunami could hit Bermuda.

"It is unlikely that such an earthquake would happen in Bermuda, but in terms of a tsunami, not necessarily," he said. "There is tectonic activity – plate movement, in the Caribbean. So it could happen. There isn't any kind of early warning system in the Atlantic at the moment. That is the whole goal of this meeting, to set that up. It is a meeting that government representatives and scientists will attend. There is a reason to have a warning system if you don't have the background education of the public."

But he said if a tsunami hit Bermuda, the Island would have some advantage over other islands such as the Maldives.

"Bermuda actually has some elevation," he said. "So that is a good thing. That would protect people from flooding. On the other hand, the area at the airport would be flooded."

After the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) created a framework for developing regional tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

Until the Atlantic gets its own warning system, any tsunami activity is being monitored by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii.

This is done through the installation of several deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunami (DART) buoy stations, called 'tsunameters'.

"The whole point of adding a warning system is to save lives," said Dr. Aucan. "People on the beach would be in trouble. People in small boats would be in trouble. Even if the tsunami comes and creates one metre high flooding, maybe that is the type of flooding you would get during a hurricane. But during a hurricane people know not to go out on a boat, or go to the beach.

"A tsunami could strike during perfectly nice weather in the summer time. For boaters the current would be very dangerous. You would have very strong eddies and currents at every harbour entrance in Bermuda.

"The point in having a warning is that you could have one hour or two hours warning."

He said it could make a difference even in terms of equipment loss.

"It would be enough for you to shut off all of your engines," he said. "There is nothing you can do with the flood, but it is less damaging to electrical equipment if it happens when it is turned off and pulled out."

Dr. Aucan previously worked in the oceanography department of the University of Hawaii. There he helped develop the Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system.

"If there had been a better warning system in the Indian Ocean in 2004 more lives would have been saved, depending on the location," he said. "Everyone in Thailand could have been saved." He said there was one story about a little girl on a beach who recognised that a tsunami was coming and saved the lives of everyone else on the beach. The girl was 10-year-old British tourist, Tilly Smith. She had studied tsunamis in geography class.

"Sometimes there are signs that it is happening," said Dr. Aucan. "With a tsunami there is a trough and a crest. Depending on what created the tsunami, you can have either the crest or the trough in first.

"The best thing is to have the trough in first. That is a warning system. That is when the water drains out of the harbour or bay really fast. That should be a warning sign to anyone. Don't wait for the official warning, go to higher ground. But sometimes it is the crest that comes in first. With the crest coming in first there would be no natural warning."

He said if you are on a beach and feel an earthquake, get to higher ground. Don't wait for a warning from officials. Earthquakes sometimes trigger tsunamis.

"If you are really close to the earthquake location, then go to higher ground," he said.

He said for some places near the epicentre of the 2004 earthquake there was just 20 minutes between the earthquake and the first tsunami wave.

He said in Hawaii there is a very sophisticated warning system, and people there often have two to four hours to prepare.

"You need only walk off the beach, you don't need to run when the warning comes," he said.

He wanted the public to understand that a tsunami had nothing to do with the ocean's tides.

"Most people refer to a tsunami as a tidal wave," said Dr. Aucan. "That is very incorrect. It has nothing to do with the tides."

He said people started calling it that because it was sometimes mistaken for an extreme tide.

"With a tide, you might have a change within six hours," he said. "With a tsunami, you can have a high tsunami and a low tsunami within a period of 25 minutes." He said 'tsunami' was recently adopted as the wave's official name by the IOC.

"Tsunami is a Japanese word that means 'harbour wave'," he said. "A tsunami can be very small in the Indian Ocean, but is amplified when it comes to the shore.

"When the tsunami comes to a harbour it tends to resonate and create a lot of problems in the harbour with very strong currents. The Japanese have been use to it for centuries, and coined the name."

Because of prevalence of live volcanos in countries ringing the Pacific, tsunamis are almost weekly occurrences there. But if one struck in the Atlantic it would be a "once in a million years" event.

"In the Atlantic Ocean there aren't as many volcanic areas," said Dr. Aucan. "The area most prone to it is the Caribbean. It is one of the major volcanic areas in the Atlantic. Another threat could be the Canary Islands off of Africa which are also volcanic.

For most people, a tsunami wave is the stuff of nightmares, but Dr. Aucan would like nothing more than to witness one first hand.

"It would be a case of do what I say, not what I do," he said. "I would definitely like to get a glimpse of one in a safe place."

He said it was curiosity that led him to become a scientist in the first place.

"I am originally from Paris, France," said Dr. Aucan. "Paris is pretty far from the ocean, but when I was 10-years-old I started in sailing school. I became a sailing instructor when I was 16-years-old. Once I was an instructor, then I could go and spend three months a year in the ocean."

He attended an engineering school that specialised in fluid mechanics. Then he did his Masters degree in Australia in physical oceanography.

"I studied tidal circulation in the mangroves," he said. "I have yet to look at Bermuda's mangroves. After that I did my Phd in Hawaii where I spent the next 10 years."

He recently left Hawaii to come to Bermuda to work on the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS) which has nothing to do with tsunamis.

With the BATS project scientists take regular, comprehensive measurements from the same spot in the ocean over a lengthy period of time to monitor changes in ocean processes and climate.