Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The dra­mat­ic up­lift of parts of Trinidad’s south­ern coast­line fol­low­ing twin earth­quakes in Venezuela last Wednes­day, is be­ing linked to a chain of af­ter­shocks and fault move­ments ex­tend­ing across the re­gion, ac­cord­ing to ge­ol­o­gist and ex­plo­ration man­ag­er Xavier Moo­nan.

Moo­nan, who leads a ge­o­log­i­cal team at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed area at Gal­fa Point on Sat­ur­day, af­ter it was high­light­ed in a so­cial me­dia post, and de­scribed an al­tered coastal land­scape where sec­tions of beach and seabed have been pushed up­ward by as much as 20 feet.

“What we would have wit­nessed there was that the beach it­self and parts of the seabed were up­lift­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in some places as much as 20 feet from its orig­i­nal po­si­tion,” Moo­nan said, ex­plain­ing that the nor­mal­ly flat, nar­row shore­line has now been re­shaped and ex­tend­ed fur­ther sea­ward.

He said the ground de­for­ma­tion cre­at­ed a stepped, stair­case-like for­ma­tion de­scend­ing to­ward the ocean, sim­i­lar to pat­terns pre­vi­ous­ly ob­served in Los Iros af­ter a 2018 earth­quake. Ac­cord­ing to Moo­nan, the ge­o­log­i­cal process is con­sis­tent with a “toe thrust” mech­a­nism, where one sec­tion of land slips down­ward, forc­ing an­oth­er to rise.

“The cliff side, the hill­side at Gal­fa slipped, al­low­ing the seabed and the beach it­self to then come up­wards,” he ex­plained.

The ge­ol­o­gist al­so re­port­ed wide­spread frac­tures, small land­slides and signs of on­go­ing ground move­ment across the up­lift­ed zone. He not­ed that un­usu­al bub­bling pools had formed in ar­eas that typ­i­cal­ly show no such ac­tiv­i­ty, with oil and gas seep­ing through new­ly ex­posed rock lay­ers.

“There’s a lot of small falls, frac­tures, all show­ing signs of sig­nif­i­cant mo­tion,” Moo­nan said.

“Oil is ba­si­cal­ly com­ing out of it. Gas is al­so com­ing out of it and pools are formed.”

He added that the im­pact ap­pears to have oc­curred rapid­ly, leav­ing be­hind dead ma­rine life, in­clud­ing fish, crabs and stingrays trapped on new­ly ex­posed land.

“The up­lift was so quick… fish, crabs and stingrays just could not get out of the way,” he said, de­scrib­ing the event as sud­den and force­ful.

Moo­nan linked the coastal dis­rup­tion to ma­jor seis­mic events in Venezuela, fol­lowed by a se­ries of af­ter­shocks, some of which were record­ed clos­er to Trinidad. He said re­gion­al fault sys­tems con­nect the two ar­eas, al­low­ing stress to trans­fer across the Caribbean plate bound­ary.

“Those earth­quakes on a scale of four to five… are ac­tu­al­ly much clos­er to Trinidad than the larg­er earth­quake,” he said, adding that move­ment along Venezue­lan faults can trig­ger weak­er zones lo­cal­ly.

He al­so ref­er­enced ear­li­er ac­tiv­i­ty in Los Iros, not­ing that Gal­fa Point had shown mi­nor up­lift in past seis­mic events but with­out sig­nif­i­cant re­port­ing or im­pact at the time.

This lat­est event, how­ev­er, has been more de­struc­tive, with re­ports of road dam­age in near­by set­tle­ments and more vis­i­ble coastal dis­place­ment.

Moo­nan stressed that seis­mic risk in the re­gion is on­go­ing due to Trinidad’s po­si­tion along an ac­tive plate bound­ary.

“We should be con­cerned all the time that we could have a ma­jor earth­quake,” he said.

“We are liv­ing on a plate bound­ary be­tween the Caribbean and the South Amer­i­can plate.”

He added that seis­mic en­er­gy con­tin­ues to shift east­ward through in­ter­con­nect­ed fault sys­tems, build­ing stress that could even­tu­al­ly be re­leased clos­er to Trinidad.

“Ten­sion is ba­si­cal­ly build­ing in the faults in and around Trinidad,” Moo­nan warned, not­ing that pre­pared­ness is es­sen­tial giv­en the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty in the re­gion.

Au­thor­i­ties and sci­en­tists con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion as af­ter­shocks per­sist across the wider Caribbean.