Another of the photographers involved is Jake Price whose pictures from Japan were published on my blog in March, as well as an audio slideshow of his time in the earthquakezone.
Instead of occurring at a plate boundary along an area called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is diving beneath another, this earthquake occurred in the middle of an oceanic plate, where the faults in the crust essentially moved from side to side instead of up and down.
Situated in a high-risk zone, Indonesia now has developed the capability to warn of the potential for a tsunami from an undersea earthquake within five minutes of its occurrence.