According to the National Seismological Centre at the University of Chile more than 30,000 earthquakes have been registered in the Bransfield Strait, a 60 mile wide channel between the South Shetland Islands and the West Antarctic Peninsular – between August and December of 2020. A swarm of further earthquakes broke out between December of 2020 and January of 2021. Why all this hyper tectonic activity? The mainstream explanation is that the strait is a region where several plates and microplates converge and when one of them moves up against another it sparks a swarm of earthquakes. Funny this as not so long ago, at another region of multiple plate convergence, Claude Schaeffer was villified for blaming the bronze age destructions on earthquakes storms. They also claim the recent activity was minimal in comparison to what it was back in September. An earthquake swarm really did occur at this time, and set the subsequent rash of earthquakes in motion. What was happening around September to kick it all off? A thousand earthquakes a day occurred in September, we are told. In the past earthquakes swarms have not been very popular with mainstream. How are they coping with the reality?
One visible result of all this is that the strait itself is expanding faster that it was prior to the outbreak. It is moving around 15cm a year at the moment, 20 times more quickly than before the outbreak. This is, according to the geological magazine Down to Earth, the fastest known plate movement – ever. Anywhere on the planet. Rather, the fastest movement measured in the recent past. Again, this idea of more rapid plate movement in the past has been heavily resisted by uniformitarians, to the point of denial. It cannot happen was the preferred mantra – as it cannot be seen occurring in the recent past. They prefer plate movement at snail pace. Unfortunately for them they are now faced by facts on the ground. The so called plates can move rapidly during 'events' or one kind or another. Plate expansion in fits and bursts is a more logical explanation than the uniformitarian model. Something has to spark it into motion however. See https://watchers.news/2021/01/24/shallow-m7-1-earthquake-hits-south-shet… .. or go to the site and click on the calendar date, 24th January 2021. There seems to be a problem with the link itself but if you rub out everything after the date, from 24/ onwards, the link will come up and you can read the story.
Looking at a map of the region one can see that once upon a time the West Antarctic peninsular [and we already know it has a string of volcanoes underneath it] was joined up to South America via the South Shetlands and South Georgia etc. At some point in the past there was a rude breakaway, a sort of Antarctic brexit situation. This is seen quite clearly on the map as a looping arch like feature of island and stranded bits of land sticking out of the sea [and no doubt underneath the waves as well] as if they were wrenched apart in a violent manner. It was no slow process of plate movement by the looks of it but a highly energetic event. Yet, according to mainstream, it is bounded by a subduction zone. It might be bounded by a hole in the sea floor but does that qualify as a subduction region?
PS … the Watchers News is a tectonic recording site and is currently mentioning, on February 24th, another earthquake storm, on a peninsular in Iceland. It is also warning us that Mount Etna has been very active in recent weeks.