• 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

Mexico Earthquake Sets Off Desert Tsunami In Death Valley Cave Containing World’s Rarest Fish

September 26, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Last week, Mexico experienced a major earthquake that killed at least two people. Given its 7.6 magnitude, there were fears the death toll could be considerably larger. Being on land, the quake did not cause a tsunami in the ocean. However, it triggered what has been termed a “desert tsunami” in the Devil’s Hole pool, Death Valley – 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) from the quake’s epicenter.

The Devil’s Hole is remarkable in several ways. Located in possibly the hottest place on Earth, finding any water there is impressive. Yet the small pool not only lasts through years without rain and competition for groundwater, it supports the Devil’s Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis). The fish, with the most restricted range of any vertebrate, have survived in isolation in water half the length of an Olympic pool and a single lane wide since the local climate dried out 10,000 years ago.

Advertisement

Being only 22 meters (72 feet) long, the pool isn’t the sort of place one would expect big waves. However, its size and great depth make it well suited to seiches, a type of standing wave. The speed with which water traverses the pool and its length means waves bounce off walls in time to constructively interfere with each other, causing the wave height to build. It’s similar to the way sound waves make a resonant frequency in a wind instrument of suitable length.

“The pupfish have survived several of these events in recent years,” said Kevin Wilson, National Park Service aquatic ecologist in a statement. “We didn’t find any dead fish after the waves stopped.”

One of those observing the seiche in the video below comments she has never seen waves this big in the pool. However, in 2019, a magnitude 7.1 quake just over the California-Nevada border produced wave heights of 3-5 meters. For the pupfish, the short-term experience might have been alarming, but the longer-term consequences could be worse.

Advertisement

The pupfish rely on algae growing on a shallow shelf of the pool for food, and the wave action and stirred sediment removed much of this. With fish numbers having risen from 35 nine years ago to 175 at the last census, any drop in the food supply could have serious consequences. At least the shaking should have temporarily addressed the water’s low oxygen levels, which may be why unseasonal spawning events often follow seiches.

The fact the hole was shaken by a quake almost a thousand miles away is impressive enough, the Parks Service Website reports seiches have previously been associated with quakes as far afield as Japan, Indonesia, and Chile.

Seiches can be caused by storms on lakes or bays, and recently attracted attention as the explanation for events in what was then America’s inland sea on the day the dinosaurs died.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China reports 73 new coronavirus cases for Sept 14 vs 92 day earlier
  2. Nine Hong Kong activists get 6-10 months in prison for unauthorised Tiananmen vigil
  3. Alexa’s new features will let users personalize the A.I. to their own needs
  4. Evergrande creditors fear imminent default as concerns shake sector

Source Link: Mexico Earthquake Sets Off Desert Tsunami In Death Valley Cave Containing World’s Rarest Fish

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Adidas Jabulani: The World Cup Football So Bad NASA Decided To Study It
  • Beluga Whales Shake Their Blob-Like Melons To Say Hello And Even Woo A Mate, But How?
  • Gravitational Wave Detected From Largest Black Hole Merger Yet: “It Presents A Real Challenge To Our Understanding Of Black Hole Formation”
  • At Over 100 Years Of Age, The World’s Oldest Elephant Passes Away In India
  • Ancient Human DNA Reveals Earliest Zoonotic Diseases Appeared 6,500 Years Ago
  • Boys Are Better At Math? That Could Be Because School Favors Them Over Girls
  • Looptail G: Most People Can’t Recognize A Letter You Have Seen Millions Of Times
  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • 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