T&T's under-explored Salt Water volcanopotential for tourism, job creation in Rio Claro

Deep in the Trin­i­ty forests about 13 miles from the coast lies one of T&T's best-kept se­crets—a warm salt wa­ter vol­cano or salt spring, pos­si­bly the on­ly one of its kind in the world.
Salt Spring—the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter Vol­cano—was record­ed in a pub­li­ca­tion in 1959 by Swiss ge­ol­o­gist Dr Hans Ku­gler, but it was on­ly two years ago a team of 37 ge­ol­o­gists went back to the site, defin­ing it and mak­ing it known pub­licly.
De­spite this, the vol­cano re­mains un­der-ex­plored to many cit­i­zens. The rocks around the vol­cano are spongy be­neath your feet. A coral-like for­ma­tion known as "tu­fa" ex­ists on the flanks of the vol­cano, which plunges around 250 feet down­hill to meet the salt wa­ter riv­er in the area, which is de­void of veg­e­ta­tion.
Re­searchers have been try­ing to as­cer­tain why the wa­ter which flows from the vol­cano is salty, see­ing that the near­est coast is 25 kilo­me­tres away.
Around 100 feet from the salt wa­ter vol­cano is a ma­jor oil seep, which al­so flows down to­ward the salt wa­ter riv­er.
Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Xavier Moo­nan, who has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mys­te­ri­ous nat­ur­al won­der, be­lieves the out­flow is ac­tu­al­ly trapped sea wa­ter com­ing from a Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir dat­ing 65 mil­lion years ago.
In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Moo­nan said the warm salt wa­ter emerges from the ground as a nat­ur­al seep sim­i­lar to mud vol­ca­noes in oth­er parts of the coun­try.
"Ac­com­pa­nied by some oil, the salty wa­ter con­stant­ly flows and cas­cades ra­di­al­ly down the hill­side where the small streams merge to form Salt Riv­er. Salt Riv­er flows gen­er­al­ly north­ward where it even­tu­al­ly merges with the larg­er Or­toire Riv­er that emp­ties in­to the At­lantic on the east coast near Ma­yaro," Moo­nan said.
It was hunters who first came up­on the vol­cano, which when viewed from drones ap­pears as a whitish ex­pan­sive pud­dle com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by dense trop­i­cal for­est.
Moo­nan said the small hill­side of very ac­tive oil and salt wa­ter seeps drew ge­ol­o­gists by the droves.
"The Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Ge­ol­o­gists Young Pro­fes­sion­als Trinidad and To­ba­go Chap­ter (AAP­GYPTT) vis­it­ed the site on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, sam­pling the rocks, wa­ter, and oil em­a­nat­ing from the ground," Moo­nan said.
Not­ing that this site is quite unique, and quite pos­si­bly the on­ly of its kind in the world, Moo­nan said it was much more than just an­oth­er oil and salt wa­ter seep.
"Our very own La Brea Pitch Lake, for in­stance, is one of the largest nat­ur­al oil seeps in the world. This Salt Wa­ter vol­cano is unique. We be­lieve the salt wa­ter flow comes from trapped sea­wa­ter flow­ing from an an­cient Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir," Moo­nan said.
He said proof of this comes from the re­sults of an ex­plo­ration well drilled by Exxon in the 1990s which showed a num­ber of lime­stone-rich zones in the area which dates to the Cre­ta­ceous age. The rocks were found at depths of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,500 feet, Moo­nan ex­plained. Clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the "crunchy" rocks iden­ti­fied then as a car­bon­ate de­posit called tu­fa.
"It is gen­er­al­ly grey to white and ap­pears spongy in parts. They are very sim­i­lar to the lime­stone de­posits at Tu­rure Wa­ter­steps in the North­ern Range, which make up the walls of each ter­race. At Tu­rure the car­bon­ate is be­ing ac­tive­ly re­pre­cip­i­tat­ed out of the riv­er wa­ter. It is en­riched in car­bon­ate due to lime­stone rocks along the riv­er trib­u­taries fur­ther up the moun­tain," Moo­nan said.
"Based on the ge­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the Guayagua­yare area, we strong­ly be­lieve that the source of the car­bon­ate for tu­fa pre­cip­i­ta­tion comes from Cre­ta­ceous rocks, and fur­ther­more, the saline wa­ters which feed the Salt Riv­er are very like­ly be­ing ex­pelled from Cre­ta­ceous reser­voirs as well," Moo­nan ex­plained.
Like the Pitch Lake of La Brea and our many oth­er mud vol­ca­noes, Moo­nan be­lieves the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could gen­er­ate mass for­eign ex­change to the coun­try at a time when the econ­o­my is in sham­bles.
"In oth­er parts of the world, a fea­ture such as this would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­vel­oped and mar­ket­ed as a nat­ur­al spa," he said.
"Com­pa­nies such as Range Re­sources and Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, who are ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing these ar­eas for hy­dro­car­bons have to date sig­nif­i­cant­ly sup­port­ed the ex­pe­di­tions, test­ing and ge­o­log­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the fea­ture," he said.
Get­ting to the vol­cano is not easy and on­ly an ex­pe­ri­enced tour guide can get you there.
It takes two hours south­ward from the Trinidad Con­trolled Oil­field (TCO) Duck­ham Road, through very thick for­est, to come up­on the vol­canic site.
Down­stream from the salt wa­ter vol­cano, the Salt Riv­er cross­es the Duck­ham Road, head­ing north­east to join the Poole Riv­er.
"Though its salin­i­ty has dropped from 23,000 ppm at the source to a brack­ish 6,000 ppm some 2.5 kilo­me­tres down­stream, peo­ple can rev­el in this nat­ur­al ge­o­log­ic phe­nom­e­non," Moo­nan said.
"With the right vi­sion a good syn­er­gy of the sci­ence from the com­pa­nies and mar­ket­ing from the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano can be­come a new ge­o­t­ouris­tic site that can re­dound in jobs and de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of Rio Claro, Guayagua­yare," he added.
Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat who ac­com­pa­nied the team of ge­ol­o­gists on the his­toric 2017 ex­pe­di­tion to the vol­cano agreed that the vol­cano had the po­ten­tial for tourism.
Chair­man of the Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Glen Ram said that in 1959, Dr Hans Ku­gler record­ed this fea­ture as a salt spring in his work Sur­face Ge­ol­o­gy Map of Trinidad. Ram said with prop­er as­sis­tance, the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could be de­vel­oped in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al tourist site. He said the Cor­po­ra­tion was will­ing to print brochures on the vol­cano to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion about its won­ders once it re­ceives fund­ing from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.
Source:  The Guardian, March 2019