The Red Sea

LAND AHOY! haha inside joke... first off, it's land ho. second, I see the sea! haha see the sea... gollie I crack myself up. Anyways... SEA HO!

The Red Sea is located between the continents Africa and Asia. It is on a divergent boundary, meaning the plates are shifting apart. And when I say plates, I am referring to the African and the Arabian plate. 

click on the picture to see the animation!

Read the caption if you don't understand why i put a boring picture up... :)

So I'm sure you guys are probably wanting more than a picture to tell you what's going on with the Red Sea. Wellll... IT'S EXPLANATION TIME! So everybody should be PUMPED! WOOOO! hehe I just thought of an amazing soccer cheer from about 5 years ago... PUMP PUMP PUMP IT UP. P-U-M-P PUMP IT UP. KEEP KEEP KEEP IT UP. KEEP THAT _____ SPIRIT UP! I think we should fill that blank with "Red Sea". perfect. 

So back on track (I don't get side-tracked easily... what are you talking about???). The continental plate is arched upwards from the current, pulled by extensional forces, and split into a rift-shaped structure. Earthquakes occur because of the faults and the movement of the two plates pulling apart. When the rift is newly forming, other bodies of water (like streams and rivers) flow into the sinking rift valley, forming a long lake sorta like a line. The rift sometimes eventually becomes deep enough that it is below sea water, so the ocean water can also flow in. Then you end up with a deep rift filled with water... which is Red Sea.

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/dgm/dgm0903/dgm090300773/4590139-small-fishes-on-coral-reef-in-red-sea-close-up.jpg

AHHHH! Cuuuuuuute fishies! I looked up Red Sea close up, and booooooy they must have a lot of wildlife because I got some pictures of turtles, fish, and stuff that just look so bizarre!

obviously there are no volcanoes here because as I've explained many times before, those accursed things that just burned me to a crispy piece of burnt crisp show up onlyyy from convergent plate boundary subduction. And the Red Sea is formed at... DIVERGENT BOUNDARIES!

As I mentioned before, earthquakes occur because of the movement of the plates shifting apart. How often do you ask? Let us see if I can find a nice chart like a did last time at the Alpine Fault! hmmm... tick tock tick tock...

Magnitude: 4.3
Region: Red Sea
Date/Time: 2/21/11 at 1:27
Depth: 2 km

wow. I dare say, that was quite recent! Maybe I shouldn't stick around here for too long... Let's check out how often these things occur...

http://www.idosi.org/rjes/rjes2%281%2920/2.pdf

OOOOK. I think I should get outta here for now.. I don't need souvenir's thaaaat badly... JEEESH that's a lot of earthquakes. And if ANYBODY CARES, I picked up a lovely wicker sculpture of a kiwi bird! BTW in my previous awesome life I had a bunch of nick names... including kiwi. Still don't know how that came to be but whateverrr I responded to it so it worked.

Now what you've all been waiting for.... *trumpet*... Who died here??? Well, because you waited oh so politely, I shall tell you.

poor man... diving accident. I'll post the article.

http://www.scuba-forum.com/forums/bsac_diver_death/bsac_diver_death.html

I'm now all depressed! poor scuba diverrrr... I hope you climbed your way to the tippity top of heaven!

Well I'm signing off now, and I'll post about our next stop later tomorrow. Right now I'm mourning for the diver... never realized how depressing being an angel could be...

bye bye for now my fellow bloggers. hope you enjoyed this post :)