New South Pacific island formed after Hunga Tonga underwater volcano eruption
The eruption of underwater volcano Hunga Tonga led to the creation of a new island in the South Pacific.
Images have emerged of the island’s surface, 28 miles north-west of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa.
The island – which is 1,640 feet long – was formed after an eruption at the Hunga Tonga volcano that started in December.
One scientist said the island was likely to be highly unstable, and dangerous to visitors.
The volcano – the full name of which is Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai – erupted for the second time in five years in December.
Video captured on a boat hundreds of meters from the volcano showed fast-rising plumes of gas emerging from the sea.
Satellite images taken within days of the eruption showed new rock formations, and more sediment in the sea.
Photo Gianpiero Orbassano
Next to one of the two islands that previously made up Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai was a large circular crater.
A resident of Tonga’s main island captured striking images of the new island from its surface.
Gianpiero Orbassano, who owns a hotel in Tonga, travelled to the island with two friends and said he was likely to make another trip soon.
“It’s really quite solid once you are on it and it’s quite high,” he said.
“It felt quite safe – the only difficult thing was getting out of the boat on to the island. The surface was hot, you could feel it. And climbing it was hard in the bright sun.”
Gianpiero Orbassano, 63, had previously travelled to another new volcanic island in the Pacific, where friends took golf clubs to play on the new landscape.
“I don’t feel risk,” he said.
“When I am doing this kind of thing, I’m focusing on my photographs. I don’t feel danger.”
Mary Lyn Fonua, editor of the Matangi Tonga news website, travelled by boat to view the eruption in January.
She said: “We got to within 700m of the volcano and when you’re that close in a small boat, it can be quite risky.
“An underwater volcano behaves quite differently – all the gas can shoot out to the side. But it was a fascinating thing to see, just to watch a whole new island being constructed.”
Mary Lou Fonua said she was unlikely to get closer to the new island: “It’s quite fragile really, I don’t really think you should go on it. And we don’t really know if the eruption has finished either.”
Tonga is a made up of over 170 islands and is located in the Pacific Ocean, east of Australia.
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