Fault-Finding Coral Reefs

With growing concern for massive earthquakes following the disaster in Japan over a week ago, scientists at Tel Aviv University are using coral reefs and submarine canyons to detect earthquake fault zones.

The researchers, Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham and his doctoral student Gal Hartman, hope that their efforts will provide a more reliable way to predict earthquakes originating at undersea fault lines. The research team of Israelis, Americans, and Jordanians are surveying a unique geological phenomenon of the Red Sea, near the coastal cities of Eilat and Aqaba, hoping that their results will be applicable almost anywhere else in the world.

The team had recently published some of their findings in the journal Geo-Marine Letters, explaining how “mast wasting” of underwater structures and the collapsed walls of submarine canyons lead to such instability.