In the ocean peacefulNear the east coast of Australia, nature offers a striking phenomenon. It is a huge island, which floats adrift, which is formed by pumice stone and which came to have a size of about 150 square kilometers, the approximate area of two islands of Manhattan.
While this large drifting mass was discovered in august of last yearNow, geologists were able to detect its exact origin, which has to do with the eruption of an underwater volcano, near the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific.
Michael Hoult y Larissa Brill were the two Australian sailors who, sailing towards Fiji They discovered this phenomenal rock formation in August of last year. Since then, the great mass has been moving from its origin in the vicinity of Tonga as far as you are now, on the east coast of Australia, from the city of Tonswille, in the state of Queensland to the north of New South wales
The sea of pumice found by Shannon Lenz and Tom Whitehead in August – Source: BBC
00:38
–
At the time, scientists explained that pumice it is a lightweight rock filled with air bubbles that can float on water. Occurs when volcanic magma cools rapidly. The production of large “rafts” of volcanic rock occurs most likely when the volcano is in shallow water, they noted.
At that time, there were more than a trillion pieces of pumice stone floating together, but over time, they separated and dispersed. For this reason, the size of this island, one year after its creation, is not the same as it was originally.
The volcano that originated the pumice island
Now, a team of international researchers, through the use of underwater robots, they were able to know exactly the origin of the eruption that produced the island. It is a volcano that is located in the depths of the sea 50 kilometers to the northwest of Vava’u Island, Tonga. Although it does not have a name, in the international scientific literature it appears under the number 0403-091, or simply Volcano F.
The eruption would have been between the days August 6 and 8, 2019.
The product expelled by the submarine volcano towards the oceanic surface generates a kind of pumice stone raft, which is porous and therefore attracts marine organisms, such as algae, barnacles, corals, among others, which is of great importance for the benefit of the Marine ecosystem.
Is a fascinating natural restorative dynamics sailing through the ocean. Its porous composition can help, it is believed, to seed and replenish coral systems that are in danger of extinction, such as the Australian Great Barrier Reef. The organisms carried in its structure could revitalize the battered coral system.
“Each piece of pumice stone has its own little community that has been transported across the world’s oceans, and we have had billions of pieces of this pumice stone floating after the eruption,” says the geologist Scott Bryan from Queensland University of Technology, in Australia, on the official website of this study center.
Bryan studied this kind of volcanic rafts for more than two decades, and the way they harbor and transport marine biodiversity across the world’s oceans. He has already carried out his studies with a similar eruption that occurred in the same region in 2001. On this occasion, the geologist received pumice rocks of various sizes for his analysis: from the dimension of a ball or marble to that of a basketball.
“We do not understand why some pumice stones sink during the eruption at the site and others can float for many months and years in the world’s oceans,” Bryan said, but he is confident that a deeper study will provide more data to understand this type. of phenomena.
“This will help us to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of these explosive eruptions and better understand why these eruptions produce pumice pools,” he concluded.
– .
