Comments on: Video of underwater volcano

Video of underwater volcano

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:55:02 -0800

Cool video of an undersea volcano erupting off Tonga. Spectacular clouds began spewing out of the sea on Monday about 10km from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu, where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered. More on these volcanism blogs.

By: Senator

Senator — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:59:30 -0800

What the hell is wrong with me? I read this, "Cool video of an undersea volcano erupting off Topanga."

By: digaman

digaman — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:02:05 -0800

I love the word "volcanism." Je suis volcaniste!

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:02:09 -0800

They appear to be pretty close- weren't they scared? I would freak out.

By: Science!

Science! — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:06:25 -0800

That is really cool. I thought it was going to be a video filmed underwater, but this was equally as impressive.

By: googly

googly — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:09:00 -0800

Excellent. Wonder if there is a stone sea in the vicinity...

By: jourman2

jourman2 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:18:42 -0800

From the big picture

By: stargell

stargell — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:36:36 -0800

Bobby Jindal does not approve.

By: dunkadunc

dunkadunc — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:45:43 -0800

Wow. That was fucking cool. So how deep is the sea there? Are there any islands in the offing?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:47:15 -0800

Thanks for the pics, jourman2.

By: salishsea

salishsea — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:53:57 -0800

I love this Earth.

By: DU

DU — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:54:34 -0800

From the Big Pic: ...sending plumes of steam and smoke hundreds of meters into the air. I'm not an expert on photoreconstruction, but my quick calculations based "hundreds" being at least 200 and the head of the guy in the photo puts the photographer less then a kilometer away from the explosion. Yikes.

By: waxboy

waxboy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:57:47 -0800

I haven't gotten that "whoa, too close!" vibe from a video since I saw this.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:15:33 -0800

jourman2 - that's awesome! The Big Picture always rocks. My first reaction was to wish I could be on that boat.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:19:31 -0800

Smoke ? SMOKE? That's more like a pyroclastic cloud made of extremely hot air and collapsing debries, that's an instant killer even if it may have been slightly cooled by the surrounding water. Less sex and the city, more NG channel !

By: cjorgensen

cjorgensen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:30:14 -0800

I only showed up to make a Jindal joke but stargell beat me to it.

By: pyngthyngs

pyngthyngs — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:35:22 -0800

That's pretty amazing. I would love to see a follow up video of the underwater aftermath.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:46:16 -0800

"Cool video of an undersea volcano erupting off Topanga." Surf's up!

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:14:34 -0800

Someone post when the Weekly World News photoshops satan's face into these pictures.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:20:51 -0800

Whatever Neptune, you can get pissy all you want, but you can't marry my daughter.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:40:00 -0800

Smoke ? SMOKE? That's more like a pyroclastic cloud made of extremely hot air and collapsing debries, that's an instant killer even if it may have been slightly cooled by the surrounding water. The passengers (and, more importantly, the crew) on the boat in the Guardian video came quite close to winning a Darwin Award.

By: six-or-six-thirty

six-or-six-thirty — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:00:49 -0800

It looks like giant fir trees!

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:02:01 -0800

Uh oh. There was just a new earthquake in the Tonga area and a tsunami alert was just issued.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:02:36 -0800

7.9, AFP reports

By: Mountain Goatse

Mountain Goatse — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:29:29 -0800

This type of oceanic activity typically precedes the appearance of Godzilla. Tokyo should evacuate.

By: 445supermag

445supermag — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:29:43 -0800

And now a tsunami warning.

By: 445supermag

445supermag — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:34:12 -0800

BBC audio of interview about the quake

By: clearly

clearly — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:35:07 -0800

Oh Planet Earth, you are amazing.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:28:00 -0800

Clearly the Tonga Room's impeding closure--part of the ongoing nofunification of San Francisco--has angered the undersea gods. Google map of Tonga and the surrounding ocean floor. (Google has maps of the ocean floor? What an age we live in.)

By: localroger

localroger — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:31:37 -0800

I don't know where ah'm a-gonna go when the vol-can-o blows.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:46:32 -0800

We really do live in a kick-ass universe.

By: Geekyblonde

Geekyblonde — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:08:55 -0800

I was wondering about the pyroclastic aspect of this towering cloud as well; however, one would have to assume that the majority of this plume is actually steam. Judging from it's white fluffiness I would say that this is indeed the case. The gasses would be released almost immiediately upon reaching the surface as there is a limited amount of ash and tephra being tossed up into the sky. The bigger concern would be the carbon dioxide which, being heavier than air, would simply gather on the surface of the water trapped under that giant steam cloud and quickly spread out to engulf nearby area, eg.g the dumb people in the boat. Suffice it to say that they seem more likely to die by suffocation than by a smoldering hot cloud of ickiness (which I'm pretty sure is the technical term).

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:55:51 -0800

"I love this Earth." Yeah, it's like it's a geomorphological guitar solo. Wasn't the biggest eruption in Antarctica in the last 10,000 years last year?

By: 5_13_23_42_69_666

5_13_23_42_69_666 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:56:48 -0800

Amazing - but if it were me taking that video - it would have been from a retreating boat. I also llove how this has a whole different texture from abovewater volcanic clouds.

By: Lacking Subtlety

Lacking Subtlety — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:57:43 -0800

my god. did it remind anyone else of this?????

By: snofoam

snofoam — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:37:33 -0800

ack. reminded me of this. underwater volcanos are REALLY cool, though. would love to see underwater footage of this, but i'm sure it's really hard to get close enough to actually get a decent shot and not be dead. you'd have to be within 100 feet at the absolute maximum from what you're shooting underwater, probably less, to see anything.

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:42:08 -0800

Je suis volcaniste!

Moi aussi!

By: Quietgal

Quietgal — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:17:33 -0800

Very very cool. I would love to see something like that in person, preferably from a safe-but-not-too-safe distance. I've seen volcanoes puffing out steam, and a really lame lava flow, but a proper eruption would be awesome - in the original literal sense. That Google map of the ocean floor had lots of isolated blips in the otherwise fairly flat region between Tonga and Hawaii. Are those baby volcanoes, sonar artifacts, or what? Je ne suis pas volcaniste, malheureusement.

By: marvin

marvin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:50:17 -0800

When will ever stop using the adjective "cool"? An utterly meaningless shorthand for "I can't think of an fitting adjective, so I'll cop out just like everyone else" When I was at school there was a total ban on the word "nice" in English Lang. Cool has become the new nice. The Earth splits open, the ocean boils and, and new land masses are born, and all we can say is "cool"?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:39:46 -0800

Yep. Cool.