If you wanted to design a lethal trap for boating, it would look a lot like Lituya Bay.
At a glance, the fjord on the south-east coast of Alaska offers a safe harbour for small boats, but the local Tlingit people knew otherwise.
They gave it the name Lituya, which means "lake within the point". Legend has it that a monster lived near the entrance where it would unleash enormous destructive waves.
Later, the first Europeans discovered how treacherous this could be. In 1786, the French explorer Lapérouse saw a hint of this when he wrote in his log that the surrounding forests looked as though they "had been cut cleanly with a razor blade",
At 14.5 kilometres long and 3.2 kilometres at its widest, Lituya is long and narrow. Trees along its shores have been stripped by what geologists call a trimline. Around most of the bay this extends to 200 metres, and in some places, considerably higher.
Clearly there are powerful forces at work within Lituya Bay, but what could they be?
Lapérouse and his crew would soon learn of the dangers when a party in small boats attempted to navigate the shallow channel at the entrance. Their boats capsized in the fierce current that was amplified by the narrow passageway. About 20 men drowned and their bodies were never found.
Then, in 1899, an earthquake triggered a giant wave that drowned five people in the native village. There was another wave in 1936, then another in 1958.
In the 1958 event, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake at a nearby geological fault dumped over 80 million tonnes of rock into the bay, triggering one of the tallest tsunami known to science. In one place, trees were swept away 524 metres above the water - taller than the Empire State Building.
More than 60 years later, the damage is still visible from space where almost all vegetation across four square kilometres of the shoreline was stripped away.
Eyewitnesses reported that the quake lasted one to four minutes, followed by a minute of calm before destructive waves travelled outwards at 180km/h.
In the enclosed waters, waves sloshed up and back again like a giant bathtub.
Evidence is that similar events occur, on average, every 30-40 years, which suggests there will be more in future and serves to remind us that when nature shakes its head, humans become passengers.
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