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Pakistan’s ‘Earthquake mountain’: The island that appeared from the sea

By C. J. Refsland on September 25, 2013 • ( 0 )

My Comment: Isaiah 24:20 ‘The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall totter like a hut; Its transgression shall be heavy upon it, and it will fall and not rise again.’

As villagers throughout Pakistan’s remote Balochistan province despaired at nature’s savagery, neighbours on the Arabian Sea coast at Gwadar gazed in wonder at its creation: a new island, ‘Earthquake mountain’.

Observers who visited the island by boat described it as a 40 feet high, 300 feet wide mass of rock, mud, seaweed and dead fish. Its surface was cracked and emitting methane gas.

According to scientists from Pakistan’s National Institute of Oceanography, ‘Earthquake Island’ is not the first of its kind along the Gwadar coast, and it is unlikely to remain above sea level for very long.

Mohammed Danish, one of its geologists, told the Telegraph the island had been created by a build up of frozen methane gas which had been released from deep below the sea bed by the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates and thrust mud and rocks to the surface.

After visiting the island to collect samples, he explained how it was created. “There is an abundance of methane gas near the Gwadar coastline where this phenomena has occurred due to the underwater shifting of tectonic plates, related to the earthquake.

“Wherever there is a weak zone in the ocean bed, such frozen gas hydrates are released when earthquakes happen, and push the mud below surface to form dome-shaped structures above the water. This is not a permanent phenomenon however and has happened two times before also in different coastal areas of Pakistan. It will erode away in the next monsoon season,” he said.