But the ocean’s waves have always eroded and washed these islands away. Over its recorded history, Kavachi has created a handful of ephemeral islands that have spanned up to a kilometer in length. Scientists believe the volcano’s summit is roughly 65 feet below the water Kavachi’s base is on the seafloor, about three-fourths of a mile below sea level, per NASA. The volcano is also known by the name Rejo te Kvachi, which means “Kavachi’s Oven”-a fitting moniker for the superheated lava, steam, particulates, rock fragments and sulfur that sometimes reach the water’s surface. It’s one of the most active underwater volcanoes in this part of the Pacific and has been erupting nearly continuously since at least 1939, when people living on nearby islands first recorded an eruption, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Global Volcanism Program.Īn image of the southwest Pacific taken by NASA's Operational Land Imager-2, located aboard the Landsat 9 satellite.
Named after a sea god of the Indigenous Gatokae and Vangunu people, Kavachi is located about 15 miles south of Vangunu Island, part of the Solomon Islands east of Papua New Guinea. Amid the inky blue waters of the southwest Pacific Ocean, a greenish cloud of superhot, acidic water billows from the submarine volcano. NASA’s Operational Land Imager-2, located aboard the Landsat 9 satellite, took striking snapshots of the submarine volcano, called Kavachi, erupting earlier this month.
A 2015 expedition found two species of sharks living in the hot, acidic water near Kavachi, thus earning it the nickname "Sharkcano."Īn underwater volcano surrounded by sharks sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but “Sharkcano” is very real-and, according to new images captured by satellite, it’s erupting.
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