Carlsberg Ridge

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The Carlsberg Ridge is an oceanic ridge or submarine mountain range that marks the boundary between the Somalian tectonic plate & the Indian tectonic plate, traversing the western and northwestern regions of the Indian Ocean.

The Carlsberg Ridge ends near the island of Rodrigues, belonging to the Mascarene Islands group. A branch of the Carlsberg Ridge runs beneath the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea as the Sheba Ridge.

The Carlsberg Ridge forms a continuation of the Great Rift Valley which also extends north from East Africa to form the Red Sea and the Dead Sea; the Ridge represents part of a continuation beneath the Indian Ocean.

The Carlsberg Ridge is seismically active, with the last major earthquake being recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey at 7.6 on the Richter scale on July 15, 2003 [1]. There has been some speculation that a massive earthquake in the Carlsberg Ridge could cause a great tsunami to hit the western littoral of the Indian peninsula in a manner similar to the Great Sumatran Tsunami of December 26, 2004. If this would ever happen, it would probably destroy large parts of the major metropoleis of Bombay & Karachi, besides several other littoral settlements.