Blowing hot: Island formed after quake spews mystery gases

Deputy commissioner of Gwadar area smelled of gas that caused a flash when people lit cigarettes.

A mud island that formed off the coast of Gwadar following Tuesday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Balochistan is spewing mystery gases.

The deputy commissioner of Gwadar, Tufail Baloch, who travelled by boat to the island , said water bubbled along the edges of the island, in what appeared to be gas discharging. He said the area smelled of gas that caused a flash when people lit cigarettes.

The sea from Gwadar to Ormara had a vast stock of frozen methane gas below the sea bed and it is not uncommon to see bubbles in the water caused by methane gas escaping from fissures, according to the director-general of the National Institute of Oceanography Dr. Ali Rashid Tabrez

But a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey isn’t so sure. “The methane in this region we know about (is) deeper and offshore,” he tells ABC News. “It’s not the most likely scenario. It could also be carbon dioxide, fluids in the ground.”

Navy geologist Mohammed Danish said the mud island was about 18 meters high, 30 meters wide and 76 meters long, making it a little wider than a tennis court and slightly shorter than a football field.

Dr Tabrez said people shouldn’t go too near since there was some movement below the sea bed. No boating or fishing should be allowed either, he said. The NIO which has a station at Gwadar had sent its technical staff to observe, take samples and photograph the phenomenon. The “island” is made up of soft sediment, mostly mud, sand and even rock fragments, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2013.