Crucial mission to recover seismometers in Brecha de Guerrero will allow us to evaluate the likelihood of a major earthquake

Scientists from Mexico and Japan will set sail this week from the port of Mazatlan, Sinaloa, on a crucial mission aimed at recovering seven seismometers found at the bottom of the sea in the Guerrero Breach.

The recovery of these seismometers (OBS) is essential for analyzing latent seismic activity in this area and the possible risks of a major earthquake in the coming years, explained Victor Manuel Cruz Atienza, geophysicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The energy accumulated in the Breach could cause a major earthquake that affects much of Mexico, including the capital, in the Valley of Mexico, where more than 20 million people live.

Scientists from the Mexican-Japanese project that studies the Guerrero Gap will be on the oceanographic ship Puma, owned by UNAM, and from Mazatlan they will travel 1,438 nautical miles for eleven days in the hope that the OBS will continue to operate.

Two years ago the seismographs should have been collected, but the covid-19 pandemic and other inconveniences have delayed a mission that is considered key to understanding the activity of the Guerrero Breach.

Located on the border of the Cocos and North America plates, the dreaded Guerrero Breach stretches approximately 200 kilometers off the coast of Guerrero State and the port of Acapulco.

The last earthquake with epicenter in the Guerrero Breach occurred last Friday with a magnitude of 4.8 on the Richter scale.

Intense activity

With this scientific mission, a six-year and seven million dollar work will conclude with the collection of seismographs and the installation of new devices to continue measuring the intense activity of the Breach.

In these seismometers, belonging to the “Earthquake Research Institute” of the University of Tokyo, measurements are collected since their installation in 2019 during a period of latent seismic activity with continuous earthquakes of different magnitude.

The last earthquake of greatest intensity of magnitude 7 occurred on September 7, 2021 and scientists from the UNAM consider that it was one more than what they call a slow earthquake produced in the Guerrero Breach that has been accumulating energy for more than a hundred years and that runs the risk of producing one of much greater intensity.

UNAM geophysicist Víctor Manuel Cruz Atienza along with his colleague from Kyoto University Yohihiro Ito are responsible for the Mexican-Japanese team that has been studying the gap for six years.

The issuance of health protocols derived by the pandemic will be limited to the 9 best scientists in their field when the usual number in these scientific missions is to have approximately 20 members.

Scientists fear that the OBS are no longer operational, although for the time being the main concern is that none of the members of the expedition will be infected with the covid-19 virus, which would force the mission to be aborted.

That is why all the people who will board the Puma will be isolated 24 hours in a hotel in Mazatlan until a PCR test gives the results.

Cruz Atienza has spent a year with Yohihiro Ito trying to charter a ship that makes the voyage to recover the sophisticated equipment worth more than $60,000 each.

The “anguish has been enormous,” confesses the UNAM scientist, who literally came to knock on the door of the Acapulco yacht club in the hope of getting a boat and held talks with the Mexican Army Navy.

Finally, in a meeting with the Steering Committee on Oceanographic Platforms of the UNAM (COPO) on January 21, he agreed to make the trip.

To this end, an express work was carried out to rehabilitate the Puma, which had been at the pier for two years and which on Thursday will return to the high seas on a mission whose outcome will depend on the analysis of geological events that indicate whether the great earthquake in the Guerrero Breach can be as intense and destructive as scientists fear. in what period of time can it happen.