TECTONIC CONTEXT OF FLUID VENTING AT THE TOE OF THE EASTERN NANKAI ACCRETIONARY PRISM - EVIDENCE FOR A SHALLOW DETACHMENT FAULT

During the Kaiko-Nankai diving cruise the peak of the venting activity was located near the top of the very first anticline. The most prominent morphological feature between the mid-slope (3870 m) and the apex of the fold (3770 m) is a 20 m high cliff cutting through subhorizontal massive mudstones affected by numerous joints. The trend of this scarp is oblique to the fold axis and structurally controlled along two sharply defined NNE-SSE and E-W directions. Fresh talus and blocks found locally suggest active tectonics and recent erosion. Intense deformation is evident from strongly tilted strata restricted to the base of the cliff that we interpret as an upslope thrust. At the scale of Seabeam mapping, this thrust can be followed eastward for more than 5 km along the 3820 m isobath. Two seismic lines recorded during one of the pre-site surveys show deformation at shallow depth, including small-scale folding and thrusting affecting only the wedge-shaped top sequence. Deeper layers can be traced continuously below this sequence. We conclude that the boundary between the "piggy-back" basin and the frontal fold turbidites acts as a shallow detachment fault, and interpret the base of the cliff as the outcrop of the fault. Dense colonies of Calyptogena clams and strongly nonlinear thermal gradients locate the major peak of fluid activity at the edge of the plateau above the main cliff. Scattered biological colonies as well as white bacterial mats and cemented chimneys were also found in a narrow belt along the base of the cliff. Fluid activity is thus closely related to the shallow detachment fault, fluid being expelled both at the outcrop of the fault and above it through the overlying strata,