THE quake hunter lost his most important moment. One noon, Yusuf Surachman Djajadihardja, a marine geology doctor of the Agency for Technological Studies and Applications (BPPT), held a press conference to explain new seabed folds in Aceh. It was only two days after he ended a three-week expedition to find the epicenter on the west coast of Sumatra. The sophisticated Japanese-owned research vessel he boarded for the hunt, Natsushima, was already