"Flood Tunnel" details

I received the following correspondence from Gordon Fader, a geologist whose organization has been mapping undersea areas around the Canadian coastline, including the area near Oak Island. Gordon had this to say about the geology of the island and my query regarding the often-repeated idea that the entire substructure of the area consists of "impermeable clay soil" and thus proof against natural water infiltration. Gordon's new information strongly supports the idea that the supposedly-mysterious flooding of the "Money Pit" is caused by nothing more than normal geologic processes.

Gordon's information also reveals that the current owners of the Pit area are aware of the presence of the natural flood tunnels. My question is why they have chosen to ignore the obvious implications of this knowledge!

Nice to hear from you. I know the bedrock is filled with channels. They were drilled by Blakenship and cameras were lowered in them. The walls of the caverns are sculped by flowing water - no question. I will try and get a copy of the multibeam image to you, as it formed the basis for our short paper. The layering of the tills beneath the island is similar to many other areas of Nova Scotia over gypsum. This includes boulder layers and impermeable clay zones.

What I think is most important is that there were lots of people on the island at some time in the past. As they bulit large docks and marine slips with Roman numerals, this smacks of the military. I bet the British used it as a staging ground for invasion of Louisbourg or some other French settlement. They were probably very secretive at the time. The archives should contain this record.

Feel free to use any of the material from the publication. Go to our website at http://agc.bio.ns.ca/mregion/ocean/MultibeamBathy/index.html, and check out the multibeam images. They are awesome. I have spent the past several weeks helping with the Swissair crash and we used this technology. We fould all the seabed artifacts in a few days, whereas TWA 800 took a month to get where we were.

--Correspondence of 22 Sept., 1998