A pre-cursor extensive Miocene reef system to the Rowley Shoals reefs, Western Australia: evidence for structural control of reef growth or natural hydrocarbon seepage?

Numerous Miocene reefs and related carbonate build-ups have been identified in the Rowley Shoals region of the central North West Shelf, offshore Western Australia. The reefs form part of an extensive Miocene reef tract over 1,600 km long, which extended northward into the Browse and Bonaparte basins and southward to North West Cape in the Carnarvon Basin—comparable in length to the modern Great Barrier Reef. Growth of the vast majority of these Miocene reefs failed to keep pace with relative sea-level changes in the latest Miocene, whereas reef growth continued on the central North West Shelf to form the three present-day atolls of the Rowley Shoals: Mermaid, Clerke and Imperieuse reefs. In the Rowley Shoals region, scattered small build-ups and local reef complexes were first established in the Early Miocene, but these build-ups were subsequently terminated at a major Mid Miocene sequence boundary. Widespread buildups and atoll reefs were re-established in the Middle Miocene, and the internal stacking geometries of the reefs appear to relate to distinct growth phases that are correlated with eustatic sea-level fluctuations. These geometries include: a basal aggradational buildup of early Middle Miocene age; a strongly progradational growth phase in the late Middle to early Late Miocene that constructed large reef atolls with infilling lagoon deposits; and a back-stepped aggradational growth phase that formed smaller reef caps in the early–latest Late Miocene. Growth of the majority of the reefs ceased at a major sea-level fall in the Late Miocene (Messinian), and only the reefs of the present-day Rowley Shoals (Mermaid, Clerke and Imperieuse reefs, as well as a drowned shoal to the southwest of Imperieuse Reef) continued to grow after this event. Growth of the Rowley Shoals reefs continued to keep pace with Pliocene-Recent sea-level changes, whereas the surrounding shelf subsided to depths of 230–440 m. We conclude that initial reef growth in the Rowley Shoals region was controlled by transpressional reactivation and structuring of the Mermaid Fault Zone during the early stage of collision between the Australian and Eurasian plates. During this structural reactivation, seabed fault scarps and topographic highs likely provided ideal sites for the initiation of reef growth. The subsequent growth and selective demise of the reefs was controlled by the interplay of eustatic sea-level variations and differential subsidence resulting from continued structural reactivation of the Mermaid Fault Zone. In contrast to models proposed in other regions, there is no direct evidence that active or palaeo hydrocarbon seepage triggered or controlled growth of the Rowley Shoals reefs or their buried Miocene predecessors.