Comments on: Sea-Floor Sunday #2: Submarine landslide

By: Eric Phillips

Eric Phillips — Sat, 15 May 2010 19:43:40 +0000

Your welcome Brian. We did have a lot of fun and excitment in the 1950s exploring for oil, particularly on the little drill ships we used in the Santa Barbara Channel. Our ship was the La Busca, a 136′ converted W.W.II minesweeper. We drilled over the port side with a significant list.

I was very lucky and was assigned to map the entire coast from Point Mugu to Point Conception. I went out only on low tide days and it took about 3 years. I also mapped portions of the Santa Maria coast and Santa Cruz (a month staying at the cattle ranch), Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands in the S.B. Channel.

The “must see places” along the coast are the syn-sedimentary slides just around Point Mugu to the west, in the Topanga formation in the cliffs and the abundent fossils just over the cliff edge right at the point, the oil seeps at Carpenteria, the syn-sedimentary slides at Santa Barbara Point, but only at low tide, the gracefully curving strike of the Monterey shale in the tide pools near Gaviota Pass, again only at low tide and of course the interesting Miocene tectonic breccia and slide at Naples Point. You ought to get some pictures of thses two outcrops at Naples. Every geologist I’ve ever taken there, swears the easterly outcrop is a recent slump. I just say, “It looks old to me.” As we walk the 200 yards to the westerly outcrop we argue over what we’ve just seen. At the westerly outcrop, we have a good laugh.

Looking at the rocks at all these sites makes for great picnic days.

Eric Phillips, Geologist

By: BrianR

BrianR — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:59:33 +0000

Eric … wow, thanks for commenting! You must have some great stories to tell. The only outcrops I’ve looked at along the coast there are the Miocene rocks at Gaviota beach.

By: Eric Phillips

Eric Phillips — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:03:48 +0000

There certainly have been multiple slides at Naples Point. If you walk the beach here you’ll find a 16 million year old slide in the Miocene age, Monterey shale. The slide is marked by a tectonic breccia at its base, within the Monterey shale. It is exactly up dip from the recent offshore slides! I mapped this slide in the 1950s when I mapped the geology of the Santa Barbara coast. It can be seen on both sides of a canyon that breaks through the sea cliffs at Naples Point. At the eastern outcrop, the blocky breccia rests on steeply dipping Monterey shale. Here, it looks like a recent slide or just a slump. At the western outcrop the blocky breccia is seen to be beneath the Monterey shale. It is a syn-sedimentary slide within the Monterey shale! Other geologists have mapped this as a channel, but there are no signs that the blocky chunks of Monterey shale have been moved along by water flow in a channel. This is a tectonic breccia at the base of a very old slide!

Eric Phillips, Geologist

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