Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor Unstable, Fractured, Spilling Hydrocarbons «

If you look at this map from USGS of earthquakes, it's makes you wonder how they figure there aren't many earthquake fault lines in the Gulf.

Wikipedia: The 2006 Gulf of Mexico earthquake was a 5.8 magnitude^[1] earthquake that hit the Gulf of Mexico on September 10, 2006, about 250 miles west-southwest of Anna Maria, Florida around 10:56 AM EDT.

The quake was reportedly felt from Louisiana to Florida. There were no reports of major damages or casualties^[2]. Items were knocked from shelves and seiches were observed in swimming pools in parts of Florida ^[1]. The earthquake was described by the USGS as a midplate earthquake, the largest and most widely felt recorded in the past three decades in the region^[1].

And this mapping from the University of Florida: Although the rate of seismicity in the Gulf of Mexico is relatively low, the Gulf of Mexico is not seismically quiescent. Since the late 1800's there have been about 10 earthquakes large enough to be located which occurred in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

September 10, 2006 Gulf of Mexico earthquake. Top view: Gulf of Mexico crust and overlying sediments prior to redistribution by hurricane Katrina. During the hurricane, Mississippi River sediments deposited in shallow water near the Gulf Coast were redeposited to deeper Gulf waters. Bottom view: Added delta sediments in the deep Gulf increase the load on the underlying Mesozoic oceanic crust of the Gulf, causing it to flex down. Shallow portions of the crust undergo compression during flexure, producing the earthquake on a steeply-dipping fault plane. The fault may have occurred by reactivation of an older Rift sequence fault.

ah mother nature, always something new..or old. It's a big world and finding out what's under the water is still a work in progress. :)

Not really a mystery all that much. There are old fault lines. If you look at this, the red lines being the Ring of Fire, when Mexico over to Puerto Rico group has earthquakes, plus the Atlantic, the theory 'creeping' earthquakes occurs. When one big one goes off, several smaller ones follow. Or if a medium one hits, then smaller ones. ergo creeping. :)

The scientists are working on figuring out when a big one hits where the next smaller ones will be. It may help for advance warning on the small ones anyway.