But only if they are designed and intended to be underwater.
This was the Marine Science lab and shellfish hatchery for the University of Concepción. The tsunami completely obliterated everything. All equipment, samples, archives, data, etc was destroyed. Their research vessel the Kay-Kay was found on a hillside 2km inland. I met with the PI here, Eduardo Hernandez, and it was pretty sad hearing him describe the losses.
But there were a couple of upsides. First of all the lab (but not hatchery) is being rebuilt and is really nice, and the boat was recovered and repaired. Secondly, he has one of the most amazing research projects in the world. He is a benthic ecologist and was already several years into an extensive sampling program throughout this Bay when the tsunami hit. For example, he had an ADCP deployed at the time and it survived the tsunami. So he has an incredible data set from that. He also had several years of benthic infauna and epifauna data. So now he's tracking long term community recovery. It's an iincredibly unique and amazing opportunity to look at benthic process after the entire community is 100% removed. He also captured an intense hypoxia event resulting from Humboldt current upwelling in 2008. So he's able to compare water chemistry die offs to physical process (tsunami) die offs and assess the differences in community response and recovery.
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