© Canadian Geological SurveyA screen shot from a scientific sounding device shows the newly-discovered volcano and its plume of methane gas. The lower line is an echo, not another volcanic cone.
Scientists have found
another underwater volcano in Southeast Alaska waters. And this one is active.About two years ago, geologists studying an ocean channel near Ketchikan spotted
something unusual. It was a submerged volcano, about 150 feet below the surface.
It was dormant. The experts estimated it hadn't erupted for about 10,000 years.
Now, scientists have discovered
another underwater volcano, near Dixon Entrance, just north of Alaska's maritime border with British Columbia.
"Nothing like that had been mapped in the area before, so we knew then that we had discovered something new," said Gary Greene, a marine geologist working with the Sitka Sound Science Center.
He and a Canadian counterpart
found the volcano Sept. 23 during a study of the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather Fault System. That's been the epicenter of some recent earthquakes."We had just completed some survey work and we modified our line to go to another place to look. And as we were transiting, we came across this big plume and this big cone where the plume was coming out of," he said.
Comment: Other underwater volcanoes have been discovered in recent times off the coast of Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. In April this year, scientists were stunned by the apparent eruption of a submarine volcano, 'Axial Seamount' off the Northwest US coast (at a similar time to the devastating Nepalese earthquake and the massive eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile), which could explain the "unprecedented warming occurring over the last 13 years" of water in this area.
As the number of volcanoes erupting right now is greater than the 20th century's YEARLY average, a comparable escalation in activity of their underwater counterparts seems logical.
It is estimated there are up to one million submarine volcanoes on our planet. Effects from this volcanic activity, combined with increased methane outgassing, radiation from the Fukushima disaster are probably also causing the ongoing devastation of marine life, mass fish die offs and strange migratory behaviour we are currently witnessing.