Japan new island: Volcanic eruption creates worlds newest island, but it may not last

This aerial photo shows steam billowing from the waters off Iwoto Island, Ogasawara town in the Pacific Ocean, southern Tokyo. Photo / AP

An undersea volcano erupted off Japan three weeks ago, providing a rare view of the birth of a tiny new island, but experts say it may not last very long.

The unnamed undersea volcano, located about 1 kilometre off the southern coast of Iwo Jima, which Japan calls Ioto, started its latest series of eruptions on October 21.

Within 10 days, volcanic ash and rocks piled up on the shallow seabed, its tip rising above the sea surface. By early November, it became a new island about 100m in diameter and as high as 20m above the sea, according to Yuji Usui, an analyst in the Japan Meteorological Agency’s volcanic division.

Volcanic activity has increased near Iwo Jima and similar undersea eruptions have occurred in recent years, but the formation of a new island is a significant development, Usui said.

Volcanic activity at the site has since subsided, and the newly formed island has somewhat shrunk because its “crumbly” formation is easily washed away by waves, Usui said.

This aerial photo shows steam billowing from the waters off Iwoto Island, Ogasawara town in the Pacific Ocean, southern Tokyo. Photo / AP

He said experts are still analysing the development, including details of the deposits. The new island could survive longer if it is made of lava or something more durable than volcanic rocks such as pumice.

“We just have to see the development,” he said. “But the island may not last very long.”

Undersea volcanoes and seismic activities have formed new islands in the past.

In 2013, an eruption at Nishinoshima in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo led to the formation of a new island, which kept growing during a decade-long eruption of the volcano.

Also in 2013, a small island surfaced from the seabed after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan. In 2015, a new island was formed as a result of a month-long eruption of a submarine volcano off the coast of Tonga.

In this aerial photo, a steam plume billows out from the water off the Ioto island, after an eruption in Ogasawara, southern Tokyo, Japan. Photo / AP

Of about 1500 active volcanoes in the world, 111 are in Japan, which sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Iwo Jima was the site of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, and the photograph taken by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal of a flag-raising atop the island’s Mt Suribachi on February 23, 1945, came to symbolise the Pacific War and the valour of the United States Marines.