Land torn apart. (Baja California)

In Baja California, the Sonoran Desert meets the sea. It's a magical landscape of rippling sand, rugged mountains, remote islands and jagged rock formations rising amid sparse desert vegetation. Giant cacti cling to cliffs that loom above aquamarine waters filled with exotic ocean creatures, including the endangered blue whale.

The water makes up the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, which separates the Baja (Spanish for "lower") California Peninsula from mainland Mexico. The region is a continuation of California's San Andreas Fault system, where the landscape is rifting, being torn apart, and in the process opening one of the youngest and richest seas on Earth.

The engine that drives this rifting is the continuous movement of huge plates of Earth's crust away from each other, past one another, toward each other. It's …