The ocean floor off the coast of the Pacific Northwest has sprung a leak. Technically, it’s more of a spring as water flows in and not out. However, in ways that matter, it is undoubtedly a leak.

The Pythia Oasis was accidentally discovered by Brendan Philip, a former grad student now a White House policy advisor. Philip noticed the bubbles that the spring carried to the surface, and when the rest of the research team explored further, what they found was not just methane bubbles.

However, water coming out of the seafloor like a firehose was not a common occurrence. “This phenomenon is something I’ve never seen, and to my knowledge, has not been observed before,” Evan Solomon, a seafloor geologist and one of the authors on the paper Philip worked on, said.

The oozing liquid is a lubricant between the two plates at the fault. Although it may be a good thing, it comes with a worrying condition. According to the researchers, the water in the reserve really needs to stay there.

“If the fluid pressure is high, there would be less friction, and the two plates can slip. If the fluid pressure is lower, the two plates will lock, and stress will build up,” Solomon explained. The system would jerk into a new position when the pressure becomes too much. This jerk will trigger an earthquake, most likely, a big one.