Scientists say 2,000 earthquakes in one day off the coast of Canada indicate the ocean floor is being ripped up

Nearly 2,000 earthquakes rocked an area off the coast of Canada in a single day earlier this month, which may be a sign that new ocean crust is about to be generated by the rupture of molten rock deep in the sea.

Earthquakes do not pose any threat to people. It's relatively small and is centered at a place called the Endeavor Site, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) off the coast of Vancouver Island. This spot hosts a number of hydrothermal vents and is located on the Juan de Fuca mountain range, where the ocean floor spreads out into the distance. Zoe Krause, a doctoral student in marine geophysics at UCLA, said this area is separate from a subduction zone — an area where one tectonic plate sinks into the mantle beneath another plate — and is closer to the coast where large, damaging earthquakes can occur. Washington.

“Mid-ocean ridges are not actually capable of producing that size of earthquakes, which are no larger than magnitude five,” Kraus told Live Science. “This will not trigger the 'big event' in the subduction zone.”

Krause said earthquakes are scientifically interesting because they can reveal details about how the ocean floor broke apart and new crust formed. At the Endeavor site, the Pacific plate separates from the Juan de Fuca plate. This expansion creates long linear fault lines and thins the crust, allowing magma to rise. When the magma reaches the surface, it cools and solidifies, forming new oceanic crust.

The Endeavor site is continuously monitored as part of the Northeast Pacific Networked Undersea Experiments (NEPTUNE) time series, managed by Ocean Networks Canada. Since 2018, the area has become more seismically active, Krause said. But on March 6, the activity went wild, with at least 200 small earthquakes shaking the seafloor per hour. In all, researchers detected about 1,850 earthquakes in one day.

“The vast majority are less than one power. It's these little pops,” Kraus said. “But it's really cool because it allows us to track where things happen, where things break, where things move.”

Krause said the most likely cause of the quakes is that the seafloor is stretched to its maximum extent, resulting in a buildup of a large amount of pressure. This happens at the Endeavor site when the plates break apart by about 3.3 feet (1 meter), and the pressure is eventually relieved when the magma rises into the thin crust and cools, she said.

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This happens on a roughly 20-year cycle, putting the region on schedule: the last time there was this seismic tremor was in 2005, she said.

Since March 6, earthquake activity has subsided, albeit at a slightly elevated background level, Kraus said. She and her colleagues are now watching closely. Continuous monitoring of the Endeavor site began in 2011, so the team had never had access to near-real-time data for magma infiltration like this before. They have many questions, from the impact on the hydrothermal vent system to the source of the magma that will eventually form the new crust.

“A lot of it is basic scientific questions about how the Earth's crust forms, why do these events start where they do, and what exactly is the catalyst that brings the magma in?” Kraus said. For now, she and her team are waiting to see what happens next.

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