WEIRD SIGHTS

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1931, Page 9

WEIRD SIGHTS

FORESHORE AT GISBORNE

COUNTRY RAISED TEN FEET

MANY BUBBLING GEYSERS

INFLAMMABLE GAS VOMITED

SUBMARINE FOREST RISES

By Telegraph.—Press Association, Gisborne, Last Night. Half-Way between TiitirnOtu Island and Pah Hill, about a mile and a half on the eastern side of Gisborne harbour, the raising of the foreshore by eight to 10 feet, dozens of small geysers with water that tastes fresh biit is vomiting inflammable gas, and the upheaval of a Submarine forest, were revealed this morning as a result of the big earthquake 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, where most remarkable changes have occurred. For a distance of about two miles the foreshore has risen up between eight and 10 feet. Half-way out to the island is a reef that was formerly covered at low water, It 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-coloured water which at low tide is one mass of small geysers and springs from which gas is issuing. A match applied to this gas instantly ignites it. Strange to say, the water when tasted is hard to distinguish from fresh water. All round the reef is fearsome-looking mud and stone combined 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 Wheii far under the sea. Some of the stumps in this uncanny forest are four or five feet high, and are embedded in black, sticky, messy mud.

Strangely enough, campers along Kaiti Beach between Sponge Bay and Gisborne hardly felt the big earthquake. Dr. Henderson, Director of Geological Survey, reports there is no apparent uplift at Wairoa. A great slip one mile south Of Mohaka lifted the sea floor locally 70 feet.