OK, well said then. I agree that tide stations are for scientists to determine the probable effects, not for casual observers and so we shouldn't be trying to get too much information out of that data without being properly trained.
One tidbit for the many people that enjoy seeing scientists get egg on their faces...
This portion of the Kuril Trench where these two great earthquakes in November and then tonight occured was SPECIFICALLY singled out by a paper in Science in 2003 as an area where due to the nature of the geology of the trench in that area, it could not generate large earthquakes.
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~simons/pdfs/21_song_simons_combined.pdf
They even made a specific "negative" prediction that such quakes would never occur there, in 2004.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUFM.S43D..08S
Oops.