The Pescadero Fault is a right lateral-moving

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 seafloor of the southern

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 ...

. It links the Pescadero Basin to the north with the Alarcon Basin to the south. All these features are part of the

Gulf of California Rift Zone The Gulf of California Rift Zone (GCRZ) is the northernmost extension of the East Pacific Rise which extends some from the mouth of the Gulf of California to the southern terminus of the San Andreas Fault at the Salton Sink. The GCRZ is an incipi ...

, the northern extension 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 ...

References

A history of continental rifting at the mouth of the Gulf of California, Ness and Lyle (1981)
{{Central America plates Geology of Mexico Seismic faults of Mexico