The danger in the deep near China’s multibillion-dollar port in Pakistan
Chinese and Pakistani scientists have teamed up to try to assess the threat to an infrastructure project where geopolitics meets tectonics
It has been more than 70 years since the last big earthquake shook the Makran Trench off the south coast of Pakistan but if and when the next catastrophic one happens, it could disturb more than the landscape.
The trench is the meeting point for two tectonic plates and is close to the Pakistani deep-sea port of Gwadar, where geopolitics, oil and diplomacy intersect.
The facility has been leased to China for 40 years and any potential disaster in the area could undermine Beijing’s ambitions to revive trade from China through Asia to Africa and Europe.
That is why scientists from China and Pakistan have teamed up to survey the trench and assess the dangers lurking in the deep.
The trench is a seismically active zone in the Arabian Sea where one plate is inching beneath the other in a “subduction zone”. The last major earthquake was a magnitude 8.1 quake in 1945, which triggered a tsunami that battered Iran, Pakistan, Oman and India, and killed around 4,000 people. And last year a 6.3-magnitude quake hit the area.
Despite the damage, not much is known about the zone.