CURIOUS HAPPENINGS ON GISBORNE COAST

Horowhenua Chronicle, 18 February 1931, Page 3

CURIOUS HAPPENINGS ON GISBORNE COAST

Foreshore Poised Ten Fee? GAS GEYSERS AND SUBMARINE FOREST GISBORNE, Last Night. Half-way between Taumotu Island and Pah Hill about’ a mile and a-half on the eastern side of Gisborne Harbour, there is a raising of the foreshore by eight to ten feet with dozens of small geysers with water that tastes fresh, but are vomiting inflammable gas. There has been an upheaval of a submarine forest as a result of the b'g ’quake on Tuesday week which rocked Gisborne fortunately without any lives being lost. Soundings in the harbour itself

and in the roadstead show no change. The locality affected is close to an inlet known as Sponge Bay, and where most remarkable changes have occurred.

For about a distance of two miles the foreshore has risen up between eight feet and ten feet, and half way out to the island a reef that was formerly covered at low water is now visible at high tide. At the south-west end of this reef is a large pool about 50 yards by 20 yards of dirty, milky-col-our :d water which at low tide is cue mass of small geysers or springs from which gas is issuing, and a match applied to this gas instantly ignites. Strange to say, however, the water when tasted is hard to distinguish from fresh water. All round the reef is fearsome looking mud and stone with seaweed and papa, the whole bearing the appearance of , having been squeezed up from far underground. Low tide uncovers a large number of stumps of trees which appear to have been cut off or broken off when far under the sea. Some of the stumps In this uncanny forest are four or five feet high and are embedded in blacx sticky, messy mud. . Strange to say campers along Kaiti Beach between Sponge Bay and Gisborne hardly felt the big quake.