[Ag-eq] {Spam?} From Your "Shaky Isles" reporter
Jewel
jewelblanch at kinect.co.nz
Thu Nov 17 05:00:57 UTC 2016
Wellington, our capital city, though not our largest:
that honour goes to Auckland, where a third of New Zealand's entire population live, sits right on
top of a major fault, and one day, and who knows when that day will come, but come it, surely,
will, awaits a
catastrophic earthquake, an earthquake which could have a magnitude far beyond that of
Christchurch's 6.3, or Hamner's
readjusted to 7.8.
Wellington is, perhaps 200 miles from Hamner, nevertheless, it has received some significant damage
and several buildings
are going to be pulled down as they are in a dangerous condition and could collapse the next time
Wellington gets all shook
up.!
If the epicentre had been, virtually, under Wellington's foundations as it was with Christchurch,
the damage would have
been of huge proportions, so the wake-up alarm of November 14 should have given Wellingtonians and
the civil authorities
something to think about as it is obvious that much needs to be done if the city is to survive when
the, inevitable,
big'un strikes.
Speaking of the Cook Strait fault, let's take a little flight of fancy into Aotearoa's past by
jumping into our.
conveniently, waiting Tardus, set the time journey clock for 20,000 years ago, when New Zealand was
1 island, not the 2
that it now is.
Fortunately, our machine lands on the tippy-tippy-top of the Seaward Kaikoura, and don't be tempted
to move because of
what is about to happen and that is the overnight creation of what, 20,000 years later came to be
called, Cook Strait, or
is it Cook's Strait? I prefer Cook Strait as James Cook bestowed his name upon it because, as far
as he knew, he was the
first European to sail through it; however, his descendants do not hold the title deeds to it as
would be suggested if it
was Cook's Strait!
Of course, the Maoris had, for hundreds of years, been travelling between the 2 islands in their
fizz boats! Disregard the
* fizz boats: just another flight of fancy!
Anyway, back to the motley. On, we shall say, Friday, the 13th pick what month and year you like,
in one cataclysmic
earthquake, the island was split asunder, from coast to coast, in a north westerly/south easterly
direction, to an average
depth of 500 feet, and 14 miles at its narrowest point.
This valley was, immediately, filled by the raging waters of the South Pacific Ocean on the east
coast and those of the
Tasman Sea on the west!
Not, technically, part of Cook Strait, but nearby is the Hikurangi Trench which is bounded by the
Kaikoura peninsula. The
Hikurangi Trench is about 3,000 feet deep and is the home of a permanent population of sperm whales
which, other than
fishing, provide the main source of income for the small town: population of around 3,000. A
thriving whale-watching
business is run by the local branch of Naitahu, the extended tribe of the South Island Maori.
Some years ago, the National Geographic magazine sent a team of divers there to search for the,
elusive, giant squid, but
they did not find any, but it is deduced that they must be there because they are the favourite prey
of the sperm whale,
many of whom display the scars of the wounds that were inflicted when coming into contact with the
big buggers!
Monday's fun and games stranded many overseas tourists in Kaikoura and the rnzn Canterbury was
dispatched taking supplies
in and evacuees out.
A cow was rescued from a paddock where she had been grazing, the bulk of which had disappeared in a
landslide and left the
cow, still grazing? on a little island in the midst of the wreckage.
On the other hand, a major colony of the protected fur seal was wiped out by a rockfall and as this
is the height of the
puppy season, the colony was jammed with newborn and young pups. It is not known how many of the
seals have survived.
Although there was only a very small tsunami, the seabed was, seriously, disturbed and several tons
of Paua [abalone] and
other shellfish were torn from the rocks. Greenpeace and DOC [department of Conservation] divers
have gone down to find as
many of the living victims as they can and return them to rocks where they can reattach themselves.
I try to get my facts correct, and I apologise for any mistakes that I might have made.
I did a search on Wikipedia for facts on Cook Strait, but I didn't find much of what I asked for,
such as, the length of
the strait, the width at it widest point and when it was formed etc, but I couldn't find the answers
I wanted.
They may have been there but as I examined only the first 20 of the 700 links, the majority of which
were not about * Cook
Strait, even though I had stipulated that it was * Cook Straight that I wanted.
One interesting little extra that I did find is that the channel that separates Vancouver Island
from mainland British
Columbia is Queen Charlotte Strait or channel that is an offshoot of Queen Charlotte Sound. We also
have a Queen Charlotte
Sound and it is at the head of QCS where Picton is to be found, the southern terminal for the
inter-island ferry, where
there was enough damage to port facilities for the ferry service to be cancelled.
Jewel
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