Birth of an Island

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.

So isolated, but so populated

[maggard]

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!

Re:Claim

[MPHellwig]

Quite simply, you claim it's yours and it's yours unless somebody else with a bigger gun says so.

Re:Praise Jesus!

[jbrader]

Compare August 12 with the age of the Earth. It's a new island.

Re:Really neat, but...

[niktemadur]

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.

Re:Birth of an Island, Rise of a Nation...

[Teancum]

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.