Pakistan Earthquake Creates New Island: ‘Mud Volcano’ Spewing Mysterious Gas And Bubbles?

Pakistan suffered from a deadly 7.7 magnitude earthquake today. The earthquake in Pakistan has created a new mysterious island. Is it a mud volcano or something else?

The island appears to be 20 to 40 feet (6 to 12 meters) high and 100 feet (30 m) wide, DIG Gwadar Moazzam Jah, a district police officer, told Pakistan's Geo News, Discovery News reports. It rose out of the sea at a spot located about 350 feet (100 m) from the coast, he said.

Geologists are debating whether the island is a landslide, a mud volcano, a fault scarp or even a hoax. Many think that Pakistan's newest piece of land may be a mud volcano, Discovery News reports.

The head of the Geological Survey of Pakistan, Zahid Rafi, said such masses are sometimes created by the movement of gases locked in the earth under the sea, pushing mud and earth up to the surface in something similar to a mud volcano, CBS News reports.

"When such a strong earthquake builds pressure, there is the likelihood of such islands emerging," he said. "That big shock beneath the earth causes a lot of disturbance."

A Pakistani Navy team reached the island by midday Wednesday, navy geologist Mohammed Danish told the country's Geo Television. He said the mass was about 60 feet high, 100 feet long and 250 feet wide.

"There are stones and mud," he said, warning residents not to try to visit the island. "Gasses are still emitting."

But dozens of people had already visited the island, said the deputy commissioner of Gwadar district, Tufail Baloch, who traveled by boat himself to the island Wednesday morning.

Water bubbled along the edges of the island, in what appeared to be gas discharging from under the surface, Baloch said. He said the area smelled of gas that caught fire when people lit cigarettes, CBS News writes.

Dead fish floated on the water's surface while local residents were visiting the island and taking stones as souvenirs, he added.

Scientists will have to get samples of the material to see if it's mostly soft mud or rocks and harder material, in order to determine what the island is and how it formed.

Rafi said these types of islands can remain for a long time or eventually subside back into the ocean, CBS News reports.

The massive earthquake killed at least 39 people in Pakistan today.