Research shows largest ‘turbidity currents’ can carry more sediment than the annual output of all the world’s rivers combined over time
On 18 November 1929, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook the ocean floor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Within minutes transatlantic telephone cables started sequentially snapping, with the furthest cable – 600km from the quake – breaking 13 hours and 17 minutes later.
At the time geologists hypothesised that the cables had been broken by a series of earthquakes, but we now know that the culprit was a massive underwater avalanche, known as a “turbidity current”.