Let's solve a 126 year old mystery with a geological detective story involving:
The TV show Survivor;
19th Century Italian pirate novels;
Eating Borneo pigeons;
400 year old maps, and;
‘Ghost Islands’.
Read on for some mud volcano myth-busting!
I must warn you that this is a big thread of ~100 posts. It is a long read with some weird twists and turns.
I really hope folks will enjoy this story, but also feel free to go grab a cup of tea or something first before settling in!
This story starts with Pulau Tiga, an island off the northwest coast of Sabah in Northern Borneo.
Pulau Tiga, which means ‘Three Island’ in Malay, is named because of the three linked conical hills that make up the island.
I’m currently touring around beautiful eastern Taiwan with my family.
It’s absolutely wonderful scenery, thanks to the fantastic geology.
This is Taipingshan, up in the central mountains.
Today we went south through the East Taiwan ‘Rift’. You can see the big valley in these GoogleEarth views.
It’s not really a rift. It’s a thrust fault bound valley formed by arc-continent collision that separates the continental central mountains from arc volcanic coastal range.
An absolutely stunning view of the unusual agricultural fields on Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands off western Africa. These round features in the dark volcanic earth are an ingenious and visually stunning combination of geology and agriculture.
I have often admired the Canary Islands on Google Earth. Whilst I love mud volcanoes, it is impossible not to be impressed by the striking beauty of landscapes produced by 'normal' volcanoes.
When I first looked at Lanzarote on Google Earth I immediately wondered about the thousands of pits orderly arranged through the black volcanic ground.
You often hear how volcanoes make good soils, and Lanzarote exemplifies this. So, a thread on these is long overdue!
Okay, so right off, let's note that there's still uncertainty on this. The state oil and gas agency SOCAR first reported it as a mud volcano eruption. But many reports doubt this and say it may be a fire from a rig or platform, possibly an old one.
Both are possible, as there are lots of both mud volcanoes and offshore oil wells and platforms off Azerbaijan. So, at this stage, we need more confirmation.
But lets focus on the mud volcano idea, as I see there are lots of people on twitter saying that can't be possible...