The Delfin Basin (''delfín'' is Spanish for "dolphin") is a pair of interconnected submarine depressions located on the seabed of the northern

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...

.Delgado-Granados et al, in SPE by the Geological Society of America, Map p.145
/ref> The northernmost of these is called the Upper Delfin Basin while the southernmost is called the Lower Delfin Basin. Both of these features are areas of subsidence caused by extensional forces imparted by a spreading center associated with the

East Pacific Rise The East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean rise (termed an oceanic rise and not a mid-ocean ridge due to its higher rate of spreading that results in less elevation increase and more regular terrain), a divergent tectonic plate boundary located alon ...

. The two basins are linked by a short

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subducti ...

which was the apparent source of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 on November 26, 1997. The Delfin Basin is linked to the Guaymas Basin located about 325 km to the south by a series of four transform faults called the

Guaymas Transform Fault System The Guaymas Fault, named for the city of Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, is a major right lateral-moving transform fault which runs along the seabed of the Gulf of California. It is an integral part of the Gulf of California Rift Zone, the northern extr ...

. It is also linked to the north with the Consag Basin by way of a poorly defined deformation zone.

References

Source Characteristics of a 5.5 Magnitude Earthquake that Occurred in the Transform Fault System of the Delfin Basin in the Gulf of California, Rebollar et al, 2000
Geology of Mexico {{tectonics-stub

See also

References