system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does anything live on islands where the max elevation is less than about 20 feet?

Every time I see videos of boats hitting massive waves that they have to climb like a small mountain it makes me wonder how these same storms don't just wipe clean any and every small island in the ocean. It seems like whenever a big storm came, waves would just wash over any low lying islands in their path and take everything with them into the oceans. Yet you still see palm trees and sometimes even people and animals living on tiny islands.
gpt
The same waves typically peter out as the sea floor elevation rises towards the island.

While it does happen, the waves produced out at sea dont carry the same force as a tidal wave, as only the surface water is raised (vs a tsunami in which the entire depth of the ocean is raised)