The 2011 Tohoku earthquake generated a catastrophic tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people along the coast of Japan and caused the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The tsunami propagated throughout the Pacific Ocean and also affected many other countries, including Russia, the USA, New Zealand, French Polynesia and Chile, demonstrating once again the terrible threat that tsunami waves pose for Pacific countries and the need for basin-wide international scientific collaboration.