On Monday, a post at Geology in Motion about an injured surfer alerted me to a beautiful bathymetric expression of today’s folds offshore of California’s primo surfing locale, a break called Mavericks.
According to the source website, the sinuous ridges we see in the offshore bathymetry are Pliocene sedimentary strata. Movement along the San Gregorio Fault folded and uplifted these strata. Apparently, this submarine configuration is instrumental in producing the notoriously big waves at Mavericks.
You can also see these folds in Google Maps, though that application’s hokey shoreline “wave effect” obscures the best expression of the contorted strata.
There is a shoreline example of these gorgeous folds of the Purisima Formation a bit farther south at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, Princeton, CA: locally known as the “Bathtub Syncline”. Easy to visit at low tide:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=The+Strand,+Moss+Beach,+CA&aq=0&sll=37.526303,-122.515819&sspn=0.010653,0.022638&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=The+Strand,+Moss+Beach,+San+Mateo,+California+94038&ll=37.526418,-122.517332&spn=0.002663,0.005659&t=h&z=18
Just catching up on blog-reading – for anyone interested, there are some details on these great folds on my post:
http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/03/californias-underwater-terrain-sandstones-folds-and-a-very-active-fault.html
Awesome — I had forgotten you had written that. Thanks for the link and the reminder — much more substantive than this one!
🙂