New Island discovered in the Pacific Ocean after an underwater volcanic eruption
It is not unknown that the southwest Pacific belt is exposed to high volcanic activity. And guess what? Recently, such an underwater volcanic eruption led to the formation of a brand-new island as part of the central Tonga region.
Being deemed as a ‘baby’ island, it arose when one of the oceanic volcanoes located in between New Zealand and Tonga, known as Home Reef Seamount, erupted on 10th September without any prior intimation. In fact, it was within a span of only 11 hours that an entirely new island started to take shape above the surface of the ocean and became visible to NASA satellites that hovered in that region. Within 4 more days, the island had grown to an estimated area of 4000 square metres, having a height of 10 metres above sea level. Fast forward to a few more days—20th September—it stood as a full-grown island covering an area of 24,000 square metres and an elevation of 50 feet above sea level.
Are you wondering how the new-born island matured so fast? That’s still left for the scientists to find out. As for now, NASA, in collaboration with Tonga Geological Services, has only concluded the exact location of the island. It is to the southwest of Late Island, northeast of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai and northwest of Mo’unga’one – all active volcanic zones.
The volcano that erupted, called the Home Reef Seamount, sits within the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, a region famous for housing three tectonic plates that have been colliding rapidly, and is perhaps the quickest converging boundary in the globe.
Sources also cite that the Pacific Plate here is submerged beneath two other smaller plates, making it one of the Earth’s deepest trenches as well as one of the most active volcanic arcs, a unique combination in itself.
As for the lifespan of submarine volcanoes such as this one, they are often known to live for a very short period of time, such as a year to a few decades at the most. What’s interesting here is that, this isn’t the first instance where an island was born in such a way. Previously, other small islands were also formed temporarily when the same Home Reef Seamount had erupted four times in between 1852 and 1857. There were submerged volcanoes that erupted in 1984 and 2006 and created short-lived islands with elevations of 50 to 70 metres.
However, the last island formed was in 2020 when Late’iki Volcano had awakened within a span of 12 days and disappeared only within two months. Interestingly, the same volcano had created another island back in 1995 but that had lasted for 25 years.
Now, we just have to sit tight and see how long this brand-new baby island survives.