• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Intense Seismic Shakes Off Canada’s Coast May Be Forming New Seafloor

March 22, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The deep sea off the coast of Canada was rocked by hundreds of earthquakes per hour – yep, per hour – at the beginning of March 2024, leading seismologists to believe that a new ocean crust could be forming deep below the waves.

The spike in activity occurred near the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a plate boundary found on the seafloor around 240 kilometers (149 miles) offshore of Vancouver Island.

Advertisement

On March 6, 2024, Ocean Networks Canada picked up on over 200 earthquakes, including one magnitude 4.1 earthquake, around 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) below sea level.

Zoe Krauss, a marine seismology PhD candidate at the University of Washington, said in a statement that this could be a sign of an “impending magmatic rupture” whereby a deepsea magma chamber springs a leak. The searing-hot magma cools rapidly once it hits the cold seawater and solidifies into a new oceanic crust.



“We can use earthquake activity to track the level of built-up stress at the Endeavour segment in real-time using seismic data provided by Ocean Networks Canada. More earthquakes mean more stress build-up,” added Krauss.

Advertisement

This process appears to happen in decades-long rhythms. The researchers have noted an increase in activity at the Endeavour segment since 2018, appearing to fit in with a roughly 20-year cycle of bursts. The last time the region had similarly intense activity was 2005.

The Endeavour site is home to many other features that hint at the strange geological forces deep within Earth, such as the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents Marine Protected Area. This 97 square kilometer (37 square mile) area is a vast “city” of underwater chimneys that spew clouds of heated water discharges. 

Map of Ocean Network Canada’s southern British Columbia ocean observing infrastructure.

Ocean Network Canada’s southern British Columbia ocean observing infrastructure.

Image Credit: Ocean Network Canada

The unique conditions found around the hydrothermal vents support a wealth of fascinating biodiversity, including bizarre forms of extremophile bacteria, as well as more familiar characters like worms, clams, limpets, shrimp, snails, and crabs. 

The recent underwater earthquakes have likely toppled some of the towering deepsea chimneys, causing upset for the local ecosystems. Magma breaches from the seafloor also have the potential to completely cake the existing vent structures with a fresh layer of cooled lava, essentially resetting the ecosystem. However, the team doesn’t believe this is a risk for the Endeavour site. 

Advertisement

There’s no need for you to fret either. While this is fairly major seismic activity, it’s distant enough from land to not cause any headaches for humans. 

”No one should be alarmed about this great swarm of earthquakes. They are far offshore and cause no danger. Rather, the data are exciting to the science community and certainly not menacing,” explained Kate Moran, President and CEO of Ocean Networks Canada.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China’s Aug export growth unexpectedly picks up speed, imports solidly up
  2. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  3. Soccer-Barca boss Koeman grateful for vote of confidence
  4. The Dark Reason Why You Never See Narwhals In An Aquarium

Source Link: Intense Seismic Shakes Off Canada's Coast May Be Forming New Seafloor

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Alien Abduction Or A Trick Of The Mind? A Down To Earth Explanation Of Close Encounters
  • Six Months Into Trump’s Presidency, Americans Report Record Low Pride In Being American
  • TikToker Unknowingly Handles Extremely Venomous Cone Snail And Lives To Tell The Tale
  • Scientists Sequence Oldest Egyptian DNA To Date, From A Whopping 4,800 Years Ago
  • “Uncharted Waters”: Large Hadron Collider Begins Colliding Oxygen For The First Time
  • 125,000-Year-Old Neanderthal “Fat Factory” Shows They Gorged On Bone Grease
  • On July 3, Earth Will Reach Its Farthest Point From The Sun – 152 Million Kilometers Away
  • NASA’s Perseverance Rover May Have Recorded Evidence Of Electrified Dust Devils On Mars
  • “Hymn to Babylon”: Missing Mesopotamian Text Dating Back Nearly 3,000 Years Discovered
  • Multiple New Species Of Cute Spotty And Stripy Geckos Discovered In Remote Cambodia
  • ChatGPT May Be Surprisingly Good At Piloting Spacecraft, Taking 2nd Place In Spaceflight Competition
  • Incredible Supernova Finding Shows That “Double-Detonation Mechanism” Happens In Nature
  • Soda Cans, Asthma Inhalers, And… Water Bottles? All Things That Could Explode In Your Car This Summer
  • Video: Is There An Ideal Sleeping Position?
  • If You Look Up At The Right Time Today, You Will See A Giant “X” On The Moon
  • We May Have Our Third Interstellar Visitor And It’s Nothing Like The Previous Two
  • Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild For The First Time
  • How Easy Is It For A Country To Change Its Time Zone?
  • Earth’s First Commercial Space Station Set To Launch In 2026
  • Black Hole Moon: Rogue Planets With Weird Signatures Could Be A Sign Of Advanced Alien Life
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version