Free Republic

Legends and bits of evidence tell a story of Asians arriving here long, long ago. Part one of two. "Even pale ink is better than memory." -- Chinese proverbAs the tide creeps over the sand flats of Pachena Bay south of Bamfield, it brings ashore the flotsam of the Pacific that -- on occasion -- hints at extraordinary travels and a mystery of historic proportions. Amid the kelp, in decades past, hundreds of green-glass fishing floats would arrive intact on the Vancouver Island coast, having ridden the powerful Japanese Current in year-long transits from Asia. But on rare occasions, entire...

Now, only 5 days after a Mag 7.0 earthquake shook the Cape Mendocino Fracture Zone offshore of the CA coast, aftershocks continue hourly. Over 420 earthquakes in this 110 km x 20 km region are already listed. More happen each hour. Why do hundreds of small earthquakes offshore of northern California matter? Nobody lives there, no businesses nor voters nor industry is destroyed. No FEMA trailers nor FEMA money is needed of the earthquake is underwater. The Cape Mendocino Fracture Zone is the southern border of three tectonic plates being pushed east underneath the US continental plate. The Gorda Plate...

At 9PM on January 26, 1700 one of the world's largest earthquakes occurred along the west coast of North America. The undersea Cascadia thrust fault ruptured along a 680 mile length, from mid Vancouver Island to northern California in a great earthquake, producing tremendous shaking and a huge tsunami that swept across the Pacific. The Cascadia fault is the boundary between two of the Earth's tectonic plates: the smaller offshore Juan de Fuca plate that is sliding under the much larger North American plate. The earthquake also left unmistakable signatures in the geological record as the outer coastal regions subsided...