© Twitter/TonkinTaylor
Aerial photographs taken showing tectonic uplift of the sea bed of between 2 and 2.5 metres north of Kaikoura.
Monday morning's quake has lifted the seabed around Kaikoura by at least a metre, scientists have confirmed.
Although a scientific rarity, it's a phenomenon that those in the tourism industry are saying will spell doom for them and their jobs. Local boat skipper Dean Kennedy said he'd never seen anything like it in his 50-odd years.
He was at South Bay wharf today about 90 minutes before low tide making sure he was seeing correctly. He said the explanation was simple - and it wasn't good.
"Our summer is buggered. We're all out of a job pretty much."
Kaikoura was dependent on tourists and fish, including crayfish, and there wouldn't be any of them around for a few months, he said.
"Normally it's busy, flat out. There are four whale watching boats, three charter fishing boats and three dolphin-watching boats, and long weekends and Christmas we get recreational fishing boats from Christchurch."
But now, instead of diving for
paua, the seafood beds had been left exposed by the rise in the sea floor.
All the kaimoana that's in that zone is going to die, probably and even the stuff that moves down that's not the environment it likes to live in.
Dean Kennedy, boat skipper
"Normally where we go diving people are walking out and picking them up.
Comment: In July this year Gauteng province was hit by two tornadoes in 24 hours.