The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has now discovered a new island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, which now covers an area of 24,000 square meters. The US space agency said in a statement that the seafloor ridge stretching from New Zealand to Tonga has the highest density of underwater volcanoes in the world. On September 10, one of the volcanoes awoke and Home Reef repeatedly spewed lava and spewed plumes of steam and ash.
A new island has risen above the surface of the water and was captured by the Land Imager-2 operation, NASA said in a statement. According to the report, previous research suggested that clouds of superheated acidic seawater contained particles, volcanic rock fragments and sulfur. On September 14, Tonga Geological Services researchers estimated this small new island to be 4,000 square meters, but by September 20 it had grown to more than 24,000 square meters. The new island is located southwest of Late Island, northeast of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai.
A NASA statement said that an island formed by undersea volcanoes is often short-lived, though it remains there for years. Located in the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, Home Reef has had four recorded periods of volcanic eruptions, which include events in 1852 and 1857. The small islets that formed after both events and later in 1984 and 2006 formed islands with cliffs 50-70 meters high. The island was created after a 12-day eruption of the Late’iki volcano in 2020, but was washed away after two months. “The volcano poses a low risk to the aviation community and residents of Vava’u and Ha’apai,” NASA quoted the Tonga Geological Service as saying.
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