This is rare video footage of a tsunami before it reaches shore. You can hear the coast guard personnel saying to "hang on" and "it's a 10-meter wave, right?" and so on. They are quite calm given the circumstance. As you know, usually a tsunami would not really be felt by a ship out at sea, but this ship is only a few miles out and in relatively shallow water I suppose, and also not too far relatively speaking to where the wave was generated. Still a scary sight. The crew must have know then that Japan was in trouble as that wave would break on shore in just a few more minutes. This wave would go on to cause the largest and most painful disaster since WWII.