Page 5 - 2008 NZ Subantarctic Islands

New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and much

smaller bits. They postulate that New Zealand was torn away from
Gondwanaland about 160 million years ago at a time when much

of what would become that country was more like continental
shelf than a large island. Over the millennia, more of it sank

beneath the ocean and became ocean bottom. Because of all the
pushing and pulling of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates
and the subsequent earthquakes, synclines (deep trenches), and

volcanic eruptions beneath the sea, the many islands forming
New Zealand today were forced upwards until they reached sea

level and above. Isn’t that rather akin to how Maui hooked the
sea bottom and pulled it up above the waves?

A further detail in the Maori story concerns the damage that the

two elder brothers wreaked on Maui’s “big fish” by trying to hack
bits off and gouge deep to obtain the meat. That’s their story to
explain the mountains and fjords and plains that form the islands.

Geologists say these features are the creation of the volcanic
action caused by the constant pressure of the two tectonic plates,

the Australian plate moving southwest and the Pacific plate
moving northerly. The fissures and earthquakes cause mountains

to continue rising and lakes to form in depressions and the
coastline to change continuously over geologic time. Geologists

say that the city of Christchurch on the eastern coast of New
Zealand’s South island is moving in a different direction from
Wellington on the southern tip of the North Island by about 4

millimeters a year! That’s rather quickly in geologic time! The
geologists postulate that this strange journey occurs because the

North Island rides the Australian plate and half the South Island
sits on the Pacific plate. 1000 years ago when the Maoris

discovered Aotearoa, they postulated that the island was a gift
from the ocean! Modern plate tectonic theory does not disagree.

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