28 January 2011

Friday fold: Mavericks

Posted by Callan Bentley

On Monday, a post at Geology in Motion about an injured surfer alerted me to a beautiful bathymetric expression of today’s folds offshore of California’s primo surfing locale, a break called Mavericks.

According to the source website, the sinuous ridges we see in the offshore bathymetry are Pliocene sedimentary strata. Movement along the San Gregorio Fault folded and uplifted these strata. Apparently, this submarine configuration is instrumental in producing the notoriously big waves at Mavericks.

You can also see these folds in Google Maps, though that application’s hokey shoreline “wave effect” obscures the best expression of the contorted strata.