HONOLULU — A volcano might be erupting deep beneath the Pacific Ocean within the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, however scientists don’t know for positive as a result of it’s so inaccessible.
All indications are that the Ahyi Seamount started erupting in mid-October, the U.S. Geological Survey mentioned Monday. The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles west of Honolulu.
Scientists want to see if the exercise is shallow earthquakes or if materials exploded from the crater, mentioned Matt Haney, a USGS analysis geophysicist. Scientists are checking satellite tv for pc information to see if there’s discolored water, which might counsel materials is popping out of the volcano, he mentioned.
“There’s nothing proper now that means that this eruption will intensify and turn out to be a big eruption,” Haney mentioned.
Nonetheless, mariners would need to keep away from the fast space, he mentioned.
Exercise from an undersea volcanic supply was picked up final month by hydroacoustic sensors some 1,400 miles away at Wake Island.
With assist from the the Laboratoire de Geophysique in Tahiti and information from seismic stations in Guam and Japan, scientists analyzed the indicators to find out the supply of the exercise was in all probability Ahyi Seamount, the USGS mentioned in an announcement.
Exercise has been declining in current days, the assertion mentioned.
Ahyi seamount is a big conical submarine volcano. Its highest level is 259 ft beneath the floor of the ocean. It’s positioned about 11 miles southeast of the island of Farallon de Pajaros, also called Uracas.
“There are not any native monitoring stations close to Ahyi Seamount, which limits our capacity to detect and characterize volcanic unrest there,” the company mentioned. “We are going to proceed to observe obtainable distant hydrophonic, seismic, and satellite tv for pc information intently.”
The seamount is a part of the Mariana Volcanic Arc, which is a series of greater than 60 energetic volcanoes stretching over 600 miles west of and parallel to the Mariana Trench, the world’s deepest level.
