Turbidity Current at Kadavu Passage, Fiji

Abstract

The 1953 earthquake at Suva in the Fiji Islands caused submarine subsidence at the outer edge of the coral reef near Suva. Sixty miles of the cable from Suva to Norfolk Island was either buried or shifted about 2 miles from its original position. The damaged cable followed close to the centre of a submarine valley that extends out from the coral reef near Suva. A length of cable recovered from the ocean bottom 40 miles from Suva is damaged in a way that indicates that it was eroded while lying partly buried in sediments and was then torn up and twisted. A wire hawser found attached to the cable had been cleaned by sandblasting. It is inferred that the cable was damaged by a turbidity current that originated at the submarine subsidence, that the current had a velocity of at least 10 miles an hour, and that it travelled for at least 70 miles.