The seismic jolt that unleashed the deadly Solomons tsunami this week lifted an entire island metres out of the sea, destroying some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs.
In an instant, the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 foot).
Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.
The earthquake that produced the tsunami in the Solomon Islands is a fairly common occurance in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an active seismic and volcanic area that circles the Pacific Ocean. Whenever you get a fault with significant vertical movement over a large area under the surface of the ocean, you can count on there being a tsunami generated on the surface of the ocean. Such a tsunami is possible and even quite likely on the western coast of the United States. Because of the nearness of the fault zone to the coast, there would be very little time to warn the coastline residents of the tsunami wave. Some very scary scenarios can easily be thought of without stretching the imagination.
The significance of that particular quake was that it was so close to land (the whole island group is nearly on top of the fault lines) that there was no real tsunami other than within the island group itself.
Nice that they only seem to care about the poor exposed coral reefs. Nevermind the people affected by all this. or the fact that human kind has destroyed far greater stretches of pristine reef life than this quake did. Just find this focus interesting. Sue mother nature I guess.
