Helping "Wife in Suburbia" with he very high-resolution acoustic data in Izmit Gulf, east of Hersek Peninsula, across the North Anataloia Fault, near the west end of the Aug 1999 surface/seafloor rupture. This is "chirp" data, or high-resolution seismic reflection data at frequencies around 2-7 kiloHz. You can see details less than a meter across or thick. The redisplay allows one to see to depth of 50 or even 75 m subseafloor. The gain that I applied brings out diffractions off of fish in the water (similar to a fish-finder). These are scattered around. In just a very few places these reflections/diffractions are aligned vertically. These just happen to be above the main strands of the fault. Either the fish are very good geologists, and are interested in the fault, or here it is not fish-it is a plume of gas (maybe coming out in big bubbles, like it does off the UCSB campus). Lowell W. posted a report of all kinds of things happening in this area during the Izmit quake-I forget the details, but basically the fishermen were catching fish already cooked, and I think there were flames or lights on the water. It's entirely possible that there was a massive gas release during the quake and that it ignited. I don't know what the latest is on this-someone can search for this. Even if it did not ignite, you don't want to be in a boat during a big blowout of gas-the buouyancy of your boat/ship is lost and it can sink. This has happened during oil and gas drilling.

In the subbottom, there are a series of buried beaches and surfaces (unconformities) that were dry during low stands of sealevel (when a lake was not impounded there). There are some strange strong reflections about 2 m above the 2nd unconformity down-one was about 40 m across. Let's see, if this is 160,000 years old (could be 20,000), it must have been a tribe hanging out near the shoreline. While the women were inside the stick house cleaning fish and opening oysters with their teeth, the men were out by a big bonfire drinking fermented dinosaur intestine drinks, dancing and singing, chanting "death to the people who will one day inhabit the new world that has not been discovered yet, except by the people who are just walking there in this time of low sealevel" (it sounded better in their language), and generally tromping down this area. This tromped-down and burned area makes a very nice reflection. And, these were a neat people, so that their fish and dinosaur bones and oyster shells were dumped in piles, once they figured out they were cutting their feet on scattered oyster shells. These middens can also be seen on these chirp data. Except, the alternate interpretation of wife in suburbia and her international group is that the bumps are natural "bioherms"....They cored at least one that is at the seafloor, and it was full of Oysters......(some of this may be published by Polonia et al. in EOS a year or 2 ago...)
Chris