Fukutoku-Okanoba Submarine Volcano

Fukutoku-Okanoba Submarine Volcano, an underwater volcano that exploded in the Pacific Ocean, off Japan, mid-August, poses a risk to the passage of planes and ships.

Context

Fukutoku-Okanoba Submarine Volcano, an underwater volcano that exploded in the Pacific Ocean, off Japan, mid-August, poses a risk to the passage of planes and ships.

About Fukutoku-Okanoba volcano-

• The Fukutoku-Okanoba volcano is situated about 25 metres (80 feet) below the sea five kilometres north of Japan’s South Iwo Jima Island.
  
  

• The plume reached a height of 16 kilometres above the surface, posing a risk to the passage of planes and ships.
• The eruption could have happened in shallow water due to which the ash plume had reached such a height.
• The normal cruising altitude of aircraft is about 10 kilometres.
• Plume went straight from being a submarine event to an eruption cloud reaching the lower boundary of the Stratosphere, this is not very common for this type of volcano.
• ??Normally lower-level plumes are seen from submarine eruptions.
• Eruption and submarine hydrothermal activities often cause water discoloration in the area, and during eruption, the volcano has built several temporary new islands.

Floating rafts of Pumice

• Several floating rafts of pumice drifting northwest of the eruption site were also witnessed.