Deadly Philippine quake ‘raised seabed by two meters’
A powerful earthquake that killed at least 61 people in the Philippines last week raised the seabed by as much as two meters, exposing coral and harming marine life, the environment department said on June 14.
The 7.8-magnitude tremor in southern Mindanao Island on June 8 has also left at least 40 people missing, according to updated tolls from the disaster agency.
Local residents first reported the geological phenomenon known as “coastal uplift” two days after the quake, which extended the shoreline by as much as 200 meters in some places, the environment department said.
A shifting of the Cotabato Trench “pushed upward part of the coastlines of Sarangani and Davao Occidental [provinces], exposing the bottom of the sea that was originally submerged,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement.
