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Birth of an Island

Posted by kdawson on Sun Dec 31, 2006 10:47 PM
from the rising-in-fire dept.
Science
slashmojo writes that while some islands are sinking, last August another rose from the ocean, formed by volcanic activity and caught in the act by a passing yacht. From the article: "What looked like a brown stain on the South Pacific turned out to be a spectacular drift of floating pumice stones stretching more than 16 km — and an indication an island was being born nearby... 'We are getting emails from volcanologists saying this is so rare.'" Here is the blog post of the yachtsman who photographed the nascent island.
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[+] Inhabited Island Vanishes Forever Underwater 408 comments
PhreakOfTime writes "For the first time the rising ocean levels have washed away an inhabited island. Lohachara island was at one point home to some 10,000 people. It, along with several other spits of land near the Indian mainland, is now permanently underwater. From the article: ' As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago ... the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.'"
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  • Praise Jesus! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2006, @10:51PM (#17419854)
    God giveth and God taketh away....
    all balances out in the end we are just a small part of His PLAN

    • Re:Praise Jesus! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:03PM (#17419930)
      Time for the no sarcastic jackasses in 2007 magic!
      Abracadabra!
      Crap, that guy's still here.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by packeteer (566398)
        I hate to be the spoil sport but this island is not new at all. It was discovered on August 12th. This was in some online articles months ago. Its interesting to read about still but its not a NYE island.

    • Re:Praise Jesus! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Inverted Intellect (950622) on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:32PM (#17420050)
      Call it what you will, but I'm not one to consider a proclamation of belief in a personal god to be 'Insightful'.

      For those unaqainted with the subject of newly-formed islands, the only previous recorded example was Surtsey [wikipedia.org], just off the south coast of Iceland, which appeared in a volcanic event in 1965 or so.

      Surtsey has been a neat case-study in the colonization of land-life in an area previously devoid of it, but has unfortunately (yet wisely) been off-limits to non-scientists.

    • Who owns it? (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheBismarck (802029) on Monday January 01 2007, @12:04AM (#17420166)
      I call dibs.

  • Natural floater? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CRC'99 (96526) on Sunday December 31 2006, @10:51PM (#17419860) Homepage
    What looked like a brown stain on the South Pacific turned out to be a spectacular drift of floating pumice stones stretching more than 16 km


    So when the earth gets a floater in the pool, it's one big mutha. Try fishing that out with a net ;)

  • So... we lose one, we win one. (Score:4, Funny)

    by markana (152984) on Sunday December 31 2006, @10:52PM (#17419868)
    Sounds fair.

    First one to the new island gets the prime beachfront property! :-)

  • This is so awesome (Score:4, Informative)

    by PurifyYourMind (776223) on Sunday December 31 2006, @10:56PM (#17419888) Homepage
    You usually think of these structures as having been around for at least as long as civilization, but clearly the Earth is ever-changing... very cool.

    Here's a decent intro to island formation:
    http://www.hawaii.edu/environment/ainakumuwai/html /ainakumuwaiislandformation.htm [hawaii.edu]
  • Those pictures are amazing. But is there anything under the pumice? Or were they able to just sail through it? I'm confused...

  • Grr (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by QuoteMstr (55051)
    "So" is not a synonym of "very".

  • Supercool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by presidentbeef (779674) on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:29PM (#17420036) Homepage Journal
    I hope scientists can get some cool information out of his. And perhaps footage of the island forming...maybe some time-lapse photography or something. That would be neat-o.

  • I spy with my rich eye. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:34PM (#17420060)
    "slashmojo writes that while some islands are sinking, last August another rose from the ocean [CC] [MD] [GC], formed by volcanic activity and caught in the act by a passing yacht."

    See. I told you rich people are good for something. :)

  • Really neat, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by khendron (225184) on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:35PM (#17420062) Homepage
    This is really neat, but doesn't it strike anybody as odd that they decided to sail
    *towards* an active volcano? Were they trying to get a last minute entry into the 2006 Darwin Awards or something?

    • Nevermind that, what does pumice do to your hull? To your prop? Obviously it doesn't hurt to go through a little, because they survived; but that stuff is abrasive. Did they have any frame of reference for this, or did they just not consider what it might do, and get lucky?

      • Re:Really neat, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by niktemadur (793971) on Monday January 01 2007, @03:08AM (#17420694)
        From the blog:
        After cleaning the water filter the Yanmar diesel started again. Thank God! Without wind we would have been stuck in a sea of stone if the motor had failed. Next thing to check was the other water inlets. Some minor pumice particles but nothing serious. But the bottom paint were scrubbed away at places along the waterline, Maiken has an ablative paint so it was just doing what is supposed to do. Like we'd sailed through sandpaper.

        So you're right of course, and in case of doubt, one should err on the side of caution. But in a situation like this, the opportunity to witness a spectacular one in a million event, then to see a gigantic patch of pumice floating by...whew... that's gotta be a flood of adrenaline. Most sailors don't even dream of witnessing something like this, it's so far out there. Hell man, you just gotta inspect that thing up-close, you take as many precautions as possible, but some safety will get thrown to the winds. Chalk another one up for curiosity.
        • Most sailors don't even dream of witnessing something like this, it's so far out there. Hell man, you just gotta inspect that thing up-close, you take as many precautions as possible, but some safety will get thrown to the winds. Chalk another one up for curiosity.

          A true sailor would rail against nature like a madman, with wild eyes and a raised fist silhouetted against the sky dramatically. Probably something along the lines of :

          "Damn you, nature! That patch of ocean was mine to sail, MINE I say! And now y

  • I'm convinced... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:39PM (#17420086)

    Between recent plans to map under Greenland's ice to find the home of the Elder Things and Shoggoths, and now this, I think it's obvious H.P. Lovecraft's prophecy is coming true.

    All glory to Cthulhu.

  • First post!

  • Mother nature is ticked at being... (Score:5, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Sunday December 31 2006, @11:58PM (#17420144) Homepage
    ...caught in the act by a passing yacht.

    Nosy environmnetalists and their cameras. Worst than the paparazzi on a Saturday night.

  • Its fascinating that something like this, in the age of of satellite monitoring, global communications, Google Earth, can happen without vulcanologists aware of it. Its possible that military organizations detected it & then dismissed it as outside their purview & didn't pass it on, in any case it's unfortunate that such a rare event escaped study. Hopefully we'll soon see automated earth science 'anomaly' expert systems processing realtime data and alerting relevant specialists.

    On the other hand, it's impressive that there were people there! That the human species is so ubiquitous on planet Earth that a random bunch of folks happened to be sailing in proximity, in what was historically one of the most isolate places on the planet. It really does bring home that there are now more folks alive today then have died in the history of our species, that we're now regularly witnessing these one-in-a-million (but what is that to six billion?!) events!

  • This is definitely a must-see experience, and I envy the travelers who were lucky enough to witness something so rare. However, I'm less envious of the captain when he reaches harbor and realizes that sailing through 16km of pumice is hell on the bottom paint. He's going to have fun getting that repainted. ;) (Of course, a REAL captain would just do it himself.)

    Speaking from the experience of having lived on a sailboat for three years, and having painted the bottom in dry dock at least once.
    • Ever woken up in a flock of mutton birds sitting atop the water and streatching as far as the eye can see? Once into something that large floating on top, it's not always clear how to get out. Admittedly sailing toward the volcano was unlikely to help matters as much as crossing the current would have.

      ...And a smart captain would shanghi some kids! :)
  • Before you go to the island to celebrate,
    who knows when it will submerge ?
  • that yacht didn't try to pass through that "brown stain" and discover that they had just run aground.
  • Now if I saw an island being formed, I would anchor my yacht offshore, wait for the land to cool, then plant a flag claiming it in the name of my new sovereign nation... Even if it's just a small island, it would still be cool to be the ruler of an island nation...
    A man can dream...
    • Please look at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Making_an_Island [wikibooks.org] for some further information and sources.

      In the early 1970's, there was a Las Vegas developer who ended up going to an atoll that was technically in unclaimed international waters and "built" an island by dumping extra material on this group of submerged rocks to the point that there was a portion that stayed above water during high tides, technically new territory just as you have suggested.

      BTW, this was also near the Tongan islands, so this is also relevant in this situation.

      What happened afterward was that a group of Tongan soldiers "invaded" the newly formed island and asserted sovereignty by "occupying" the island in the name of Tonga. Instead of formenting an international incident, the developer relented and gave up his attempt to build his own South Pacific version of Monaco.

      I'm not sure what would have happened if this developer had his own "army" that would have defended the island, but it certainly seems like Tonga would consider it justifications for going to war if it happened near one of their islands. I'm curious what the Tongan government may have to say about this new island in their general domain.
      • Well by all accounts the Tongan soldiers where very minimally if at all armed. Clearly if you are trying to set up a new sovregn nation state an army to defend your nation is critical. There are plenty of individuals in the world with sufficient wealth to pull this off.

  • Satellite pictures (Score:3, Informative)

    by cosmol (143886) on Monday January 01 2007, @11:56AM (#17422688)
    What a great story for the new year, but it should be said that this island formed this past august.

    Someone posted these links to satellite pics on the blog page.

    http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01899 [nasa.gov]

    http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/sh ownh.php3?img_id=13971 [nasa.gov]

  • I was actually out there... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mclearn (86140) on Monday January 01 2007, @02:30PM (#17423844) Homepage
    No kidding. I was sailing from New Zealand to Vanuatu when this happened. Our ham radio was awash in traffic as this thing surfaced. The problem with pumice is that it floats on the water and reduces the surface tension. When your boat goes through it, you get all your expensive ablative paint scraped off...and then you sink a few feet into the water. If you don't have enough freeboard (the amount of boat height from waterline to decking), then you *will* sink. The other thing is that you can't actually use your motor very well, so you have try to sail out...this is obviously a problem during nighttime when you can't see anything and you end up running right into it. That'll wake you up.

    • Re:Claim (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MPHellwig (847067) <mhellwig@xs4all.nl> on Monday January 01 2007, @12:33AM (#17420242) Homepage
      Quite simply, you claim it's yours and it's yours unless somebody else with a bigger gun says so.
    • Well - if the island is formed close to another chain of islands, whoever lays claim to the original chain, probably by default has claim to the new one simply due to proximity.

      However being able to occupy and defend this island is only part of the ability to claim it, because the governing organization of the island must also be recognized by other governments as being the official governing body for that area of land. Anyone can say they are an independent sovereign nation-state, but even if they have the

    • Re:Claim (Score:5, Informative)

      by BrianH (13460) on Monday January 01 2007, @04:58AM (#17421000)
      Depends on where its at. This particular island lies within the already recognized territorial waters of Tonga, so it belongs to them. Since most new islands would form in volcanic chains with pre-existing atolls and islands, this is likely to be the case the vast majority of the time.

      If you did manage to spot an island forming outside of the territorial waters of another nation, the biggest gun rule generally applies. You can claim it yourself and try to create your own nation, but good luck defending it when someone with bigger guns than you decides to grab it. Until you have a settled population on the island, nobody is going to care that some lone nut got kicked off a speck of rock in the middle of the ocean. He who had the biggest guns wins. Until you actually get a population, nobody is going to recognize you as a nation. As a example, the Republic of Minerva was set up in the 1970's on infill located on an unclaimed atoll...basically, a bunch of dirt was piled on an atoll to create an artificial island. Nobody paid much attention to the island or the builders claims, and eventually Tonga sent their army over, evicted the guy, and claimed the island for themselves. Since there was no actual population living on the island, little attention was paid to the "invasion". The people involved in building the island still whine about their claim and call themselves the "government in exile", but without a population to represent or an army to defend themselves, they're little more than a paper organization. The island, as I understand it, was allowed to erode back into the sea. Only a few narrow spits of land ringing the reefs remain.
    • My source (sorry, no link as his book's not been published yet) says


      Even if the book's not published, what's the author's name. Has he published any other books or articles?

      • he offers a fresh look from outside the field. Here's an email I received some months back:

        June 8th, 2006 (email text below)

        THIS PAPER SOURCE IS DESTINED TO BECOME FAMOUS:

        Levitus, who has become one of the old men of oceanography and related earth history, cited in oceanography lit. and esp. related to global warming, is very soft spoken but is clearly telling his colleagues in the backhanded way academics often say things that greenhouse gas theory is a crock. The climate change mostly is being induced by

        • he offers a fresh look from outside the field

          Translation: He drags up stale non-sequiters because he hasn't got a fucking clue.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Genevish (93570)

      Are you joking, or truly an idiot? (Or do you work for Big Oil?) Why would there suddenly be an increase in volcanic activity in the last 50 years?

      ...says that oceanographers have 50+ years of data logging ocean temperatures, that prove this theory beyond any shadow of a doubt.

      The increase in CO2 over the last century would cause an increase in water temperature as well...

      • "Why would there suddenly be an increase in volcanic activity in the last 50 years?"

        Apparently melting glaciers have caused a slight increase in sismic activity. Some oddballs think increased sismic activity equates to increased vulcanisim and "disproves" AGW or at least absolves human's of any blame. Kinda like some poeple still insist on perverting science to support a literal interpretation of "The" bible, only they pervert science to support their version of "The" economy.

        "The increase in CO2 over

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