Quake lifts Solomons island metres from the sea
Pastor Dale Morgan
Saturday April 7, 8:52 PM
*Quake lifts Solomons island metres from the sea*
The force of this week's Solomons earthquake has lifted an island in the
South Pacific archipelago and pushed out its shoreline by tens of
metres, exposing surrounding reefs.
The remote island of Ranongga in the western Solomon Islands used to
have submerged coral reefs that attracted scuba divers from around the
world.
But since Monday's massive earthquake in the Solomon Islands, the reefs
are now exposed above the water and are dying, an AFP reporter and
photographer have seen.
The AFP team, which travelled to Ranongga on a chartered outboard after
the quake, saw exposed reefs bleaching in the sun, and covered with dead
fish, eels, clams and other marine life.
The 8.0-magnitude quake, caused by a shift in the Earth's tectonic
plates, triggered a tsunami that killed at least 34 people in the remote
western Solomons and left 5,500 homeless.
Aid agencies have yet to reach Ranongga, but the AFP team saw the
devastation that has permanently altered the geography of the island,
32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres wide.
Although Ranongga escaped the fury of the tsunami, the seismic upheaval
from the quake pushed out the shoreline by up to 70 metres, local
resident Hendrik Kegala also said.
"Plenty big noise," he told AFP in the local pidgin dialect.
"Water go back and not come back again," he added, saying the whooshing
sound of the receding water and the shaking from the quake occurred
simultaneously.
The loss of the reefs was a huge blow for the fishing communities that
are dotted along Ranongga's coast, said Jackie Thomas, acting manager
for Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the Solomons.
"The fish from the reefs are the major source of protein for the
villagers," she told AFP from the provincial capital Gizo.
"They use shells for tools and rely on the sea for many of their basic
needs.
"It just shows the incredible force of the earthquake, to move a whole
island."
She said the reefs around Ranongga were a protected marine environment
and locals had worked hard with WWF in recent years to ensure that they
were managed sustainably.
"Now it's another marine environment that has been destroyed," she said.
"Who knows if the coral reefs will recover and the fish will come back?
Villagers will have to travel further to find the same sort of food and
nutrition they've relied on -- the whole food chain has been disrupted."