Ballenas Fault
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The Ballenas Fault is a
transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduct ...
located on the seabed of the
Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...
, extending through the Canal de Ballenas which separates the
Isla Ángel de la Guarda Isla Ángel de la Guarda, (Guardian Angel Island) also called Archangel Island, is a large island in the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) east of Bahía de los Ángeles in northwestern Mexico, separated from the Baja California Peninsula by the ...
from the Baja California Peninsula. The fault is an integral part of the
East Pacific Rise The East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean rise (termed an oceanic rise and not a mid-ocean ridge due to its higher rate of spreading that results in less elevation increase and more regular terrain), a divergent tectonic plate boundary located alon ...
, linking the
Delfin Basin The Delfin Basin (''delfín'' is Spanish for "dolphin") is a pair of interconnected submarine depressions located on the seabed of the northern Gulf of California. The northernmost of these is called the Upper Delfin Basin while the southernmost is ...
in the north with a smaller spreading center to the south. The fault is considered the northernmost member of a grouping of four transform faults called the Guaymas Transform Fault System. The Ballenas Fault produced a magnitude 6.9 earthquake on August 3, 2009.


References

* Geology of Mexico Geography of Baja California {{tectonics-stub