Today the island of Camiguin is one. But tomorrow, will there be an "Anak Camiguin?" It is not an impossibility you know. There are only Two Possibilities: Camiguin is a rising island or a sinking one. Nobody knows of course. What do you think? Read Sections of my book and inform yourself on the possibilities. See pages 74-83 Today the island is one Today the island of Camiguin is one. When your children, their children and great children visit the island, it will still be one. But the island will not be one island forever. Just as we generate descendants ourselves, so will the island metamorphose geologically, shedding parts of its mountain sides as we saw the northwest side of Hibok Hibok fall away one day, from the highroads of Balbagon. The island is bucolic and not convulsing now, but one day it might awaken from its slumber, disturbing all who sleep in its shadow. The photo below show it on an emerald sea. But how is it rooted? On solid rock down deep? Or on shifting sands? Even geologists can only theorize. And theologians theologize. Should both scientificity or philosophizing fail to describe deep geologic reality, maybe a little story can help. Once there was an island with a deeply religious people. They had a shell conch which they used whenever a storm or a calamity loomed near, so as to implore mercy from their god. One day, a young man dropped the conch on the rocks where it smashed to pieces. Fearing the islanders’ reproach, the young man replaced the conch with an almost exact replica and no one was the wiser for it. But when the storms approached the island and the volcano rumbled, the villagers blew on the conch. But if failed to reach the ears of the gods for it had a different sound and was not the real one. And so the floods came and the volcano vented its fury on the people. The young man himself lost his life in the fury but the villagers understood why. There has to be reparation for the breaking of a sacred relationship between deity and people. Soon the people replaced the sacred vessel and life in the island became normal again. (Adapted from Megan Mckenna) The issue now would seem to be this: that if a people were to go about life with all the trappings of its religion, but with some degree of falsity in some of the practices of their faith, would their god be able to hear their cries in moments of crisis? Look at my island below and be grateful for the science and technology that allows us to see it like it is. It is green and provides pure spring waters enough for all. Seen directly from above, the crater or mouth of this volcanic island gives one the impression that it is just one volcanic island. But it is not just one volcano but seven! The question is: how deep are the roots of this island? And are they filled with red hot magma? Why are the hot springs of the island hot? Silly, you say. But think about it.  Camiguin island In November of 2001 the island changed dramatically in dead of night when violent, whirling waterspouts scarred the Hubangon, Mahinog mountain side. The scoured hillsides are still now visible to incoming boats rounding towards Benoni port. This same waterspout that caused so much havoc also removed all traces of the mountain pass path from Itum to the Dinangasan river, on the western side of the island. The path that I, my wife Angelita, and Goldie Beechmann and his wife Jeyvva, searched for, one fine December morning as we trekked the pass. Unknown to us, the path had been washed away by the previous storm. The river which was now flowing clear and lovely as a small rivulet was only a few weeks ago, a roaring, angry one. Meanwhile similar, silent buildups of geologic magma continue to well up beneath our island. Silent, present and unrelenting. It is almost impossible to imagine this volcanic force when one approaches the island during early bucolic mornings, the sea cool and calm, and the landfall bathing gently in morning rain. It is one Camiguin island: one province, five towns, one circumferential road, one volcanic “mouth,” a green colored, slimy lagoon that seems to “breathe” as it swells up and down. The island is said to have seven volcanoes, two of which, in a sequential order of some 80 years had erupted on a north to southerly direction. You would never think that, however, because Camiguin, as seen from satellite, appears like one mountain island volcano. But the eruptions says otherwise. First, the old volcano in Catarman 1871, then the Hibok Hibok volcano in Mambajao in 1951, on a move towards the island’s center, as if on a crescendo And should geologic history be of any significance or be a foreboding of some kind, the southerly creep of eruptions points with invisible fingers towards Mt. Mambajao or Timpoong, the volcano with the biggest mouth or crater in the island’s center. See the ravines radiating from the island’s mouth in the center and imagine hot lava and gaseous fumes coursing through them, if you will. This cataclysm, should it happen, will be a big bang indeed for such a smallish island. This is the volcano (Timpoong) which, when it erupts, in the words of Dr. Luis Nery in a conversation with a relative, once said “could only mean that we are all dead.” To my mind, disaster preparedness should be focused on this central volcano erupting, it being the largest and located in the island center. And, evacuation rehearsals is a “must.” Fortunately, because of its conical features, farms that require cultivation and tilling, are largely absent along its slopes. But because its “mouth” is convex, we may not observe a build up of a lava dome which we expect would form and be largely visible if Mt. Mambajao were to have a perfect cone like Mt. Mayon, in Bicol, when eruption time came to the fore. Hibok-Hibok, however, has such a dome today: jagged and spent. Which forces us to ask the question: would Mt. Mambajao be a Pinatubo volcano? Or would it be a Mayon volcano?  Our island is alive and well Indeed, our island is alive. Proven alive by geology and by science as undersea tectonic plates incessantly and inexorably creep at a certain pace, moving from points A to B, measurable truly and unambiguously. Plates collide as they move into each other. One plate subsumes itself downwards while the other opposing side is hurtled in slow motion, upwards. To become mountains that in turn become volcanoes that spew black, hard material which when trapped in the volcanic process is then grounded as fine, black sand, the same black sands found in Yumbing. These black pepper-like, silica material which we find washed on our shores are the output of these volcanism events. And black sands, contrasts with the white sands of the “white island,” which is directly opposite, a mere mile away from the other. For while the white sandy beach atoll may be sands “on its way up,” the black sandy beaches that once upon a time came tumbling down from a volcanic mouth, “are sand on its way down,” returning to the sea, its origins. I know the old volcano indeed looks black and rounded when seen by satellite. Volcanic growth and their rising from the sea and from other plains elsewhere is a geologic fact. Like the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia, where growth was measured in feet per year. Our island too could be “reborn” as a small island like Karakatoa, which disappeared in 1883 to the bottom of the sea, yielding another baby island rightfully named in Indonesian as “Anak.” Now, could there be also an “Anak Camiguin?” That would be the day. It may be hard to believe that such a large piece of island could disappear into or be swallowed by the sea, or for that matter emerge from `the depths, like the Oregon undersea volcano, after sitting there for a few million years or so. The submerged volcanic mountain under off the Oregon coast But this could happen, and indeed it had been shown in that one volcanic island of a mountain range, which now sits just off the coast of Oregon today, in 2012. If you find this hard to believe, maybe this photo taken by British scientists will convince you. And, if Charles Darwin was correct in his scientific musings, the subsidence of the world’s ocean waters could reveal further sitting volcanoes off the coast of Oregon, which could rise still, provided the magma forces that could elevate it coincides with sufficient ocean subsidence, which would make its exposure above sea level, greater. The discovery of these undersea volcanic mountain range came somewhat as surprise to the scientists because a year earlier, when they mapped the area, the volcanoes were absent. So when they saw what they thought was an “alien sea floor image” captured by the cameras in their research instruments, they believed they were in the wrong place, when actually they were not. It was just that a year earlier there were no volcanoes in the vicinity, but that a year later the volcanoes were there. “The sea floor had changed! That’s why we did’nt recognize anything,” said one of the scientists.  Underwater volcanoes off coast of Oregon Question: Did Camiguin, before it rose from the sea, if indeed it rose from the sea, already had its mountain peaks formed before it broke the water surface? Today in Camiguin, reference is often made to the “Da-an Vulcan” or the “old volcano because the new volcano that was seen by the scientist voyager in 1875 is not visible today. Its pointy heights are now gone, replaced by ragged edges but with a round dome, and cut by a high road with steep northwestern edges that has a breath taking view of Bohol island. Siargao island The island shown below is the Siargao islands, north of Surigao province. Obviously it does not look like Camiguin, but Camiguin has smaller versions of it, the so-called “white-island” and the Mantigue island, across Benoni harbor.  Siargao atoll (l island) We can learn a lot about islands from Charles Darwin who described some of the islands that he saw during his long voyage with the Beagle. Darwin’s mind turns to atolls, lagoons, subsidence of islands, corral reefs and the like during the final stages of their voyage, on the leg after Australia, Tahiti and the Indian Ocean segment. “Atolls,” according to Charles Darwin, is an Indian word for a lagoon-island, which fits the above Siargao island to his definition. The other point he makes is that Although atolls are the commonest corral structures throughout some enormous oceanic tracts, they are entirely absent in other seas, as in the West Indies: we can now at once perceive the cause, for where there has not been subsidence, atolls cannot have been formed; and in the case of the West Indies and parts of the East Indies, these tracts are known to have been rising within the recent period. Taking into consideration the proofs of recent elevation both on the fringed coasts and on some others (for instance in South America) where there are no reefs, we are led to conclude that the great continents are for the most part rising areas: and from the nature of the corral reefs, that the central parts of the great oceans are sinking areas. Finally, after arriving at his conclusion in the 19th century that indeed some subsidence and elevation processes occurs, with one of these geologic processes of greater intensity than the other, Mr. Darwin makes his concluding statement: Throughout the spaces interspersed with atolls, where not a single peak of high land has been left above the level of the sea, the sinking must have been immense in amount and extremely slow. We see in each barrier reef a proof that the land has there subsided, and in each atoll a monument over an island now lost. Weighing the careful deductions made by Mr. Darwin, and looking at the modern day satellite photos of the island of Camiguin and the Siargao atoll/island lagoon, we tend to think that in our Camiguin island, some upward or elevatory forces caused the rise of the island, from below the sea surface. And this must have been caused by hot magma from below. The Siargao atoll, on the other hand, must have had, at some earlier period, seen some monument of a mountain, now lost. Of the big islands of this world, of which Mindanao is second largest, rivers also work to form smaller islands within its interior everywhere, seen today by a small flying machine called the “Flying Gecko,” operating out of Del Monte, Bukidnon. Below is a photo of river action forming a river island, one completely encircled, and the other not. This was photographed in Bukidnon by Mr. Cal Frias, pilot of the flying machine The Flying Gecko. For a fee of 1200 pesos one can ride behind the microlight flying glider of Mr. Frias, who would then gun his machine towards the Bugo coast, flying at low altitude over the familiar Alae plateau, the Agusan meandering river before veering left to hug the city coastline as it flies back to the Del Monte airport, its origin. 
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 23:55:29 +0000
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