Scientists land on newly formed volcanic island

TOKYO: Japanese scientists are getting an up-close lesson on how volcanic islands are formed.

Last week, they landed on Nishinoshima, which was just a rocky outcropping in the Pacific Ocean until two years ago, when spectacular eruptions spewed lava and ash, expanding it to 12 times its size.

Aerial footage of the island, about 1000km south of Tokyo, showed a cone in the middle surrounded by vegetation.

Researchers from the Environment Ministry who swam the final distance from a small boat to the island to minimise biological contamination were the first people to set foot on the expanded island last week.

They collected rock, plant and insect samples and observed the first colonisation of the island by masked gannets, a large seafaring bird.

In 2013, an eruption next to Nishinoshima, a cluster of rocks barely 650m long and 200m wide, swallowed the outcropping and grew into a 2.7km2 island, bigger than the city state of Monaco.

Aside from ecological research, the team hopes to collect samples of lava and ash to learn more about the growth process of a volcanic island.

They also planted several seismic monitors around the uninhabited island.

Studying volcanoes is high priority for Japan, which lies on the “Ring of Fire”, a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes that runs around the Pacific Ocean. – Reuters