A plume of volcanic smoke is seen rising from the appropriately-named Mount Asphyxia volcano, located on Zavodovski Island in the southern Atlantic. The image was acquired on April 27 by NASA's Aqua satellite.

Zavodovski is part of the South Sandwich Islands, a group of 11 British-owned islands located 217 miles southeast of South Georgia, off the tip of South America. Only 3.1 miles wide, the icy island is dominated by the 1,800-foot-high stratovolcano.

Aptly named, the sulphuric fumes from Asphyxia coupled with the stench of penguin droppings -- the island is a breeding ground for millions of chinstrap penguins -- can be suffocating for human visitors.

Experts say a "swarm" of small earthquakes off the northwest coast of Vancouver Island are part of the normal seismic activity in the area, and they could continue for several more days.

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake that struck just after midnight on Tuesday morning was the eighth small quake with a magnitude between 3.8 and 4.7 to strike the region since April 22.
Pacific Geoscience Centre Seismologist Gary Rogers said the activity is focused along a 20-kilometre stretch along an area called the Raveer Delwood Fault, located about 200 kilometres offshore.

"In the very thin crust that we have out there off our west coast of Vancouver Island, it often fractures in a series of small earthquakes, usually about this size being the maximum."

Rogers said more small earthquakes are expected in the area over the next week.

"They often go on for days. There's been a lot of smaller ones, so eventually they'll wind down, but typically, what we've seen in the past is that most of these swarms last a few days to a week or so."

Southern England and Wales were on high flood alert Tuesday, with thousands of homes at risk from a deluge that has killed one person after Britain's wettest April in over 100 years.

Rivers were being closely monitored as flood defences held back muddy water from over 25,000 homes, the Environment Agency said. A total of 40 warnings of expected flooding and 152 alerts for possible floods were in place Tuesday.

"There is still a risk of flooding across many parts of England and Wales with particular focus on Somerset, Dorset and Devon," the agency said Monday evening, ahead of a night of thunder and heavy showers.

Forecasters the Met Office said Tuesday that heavy rain was starting to ease but "there will still be a good deal of standing water and a continued risk of localised flooding since river levels remain high".

Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit organization that estimates it has cleared nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic debris from Alaskan coasts over the past 10 years, is reporting "tons" of what it believes is likely tsunami debris washing up on the coasts of the Kayak and Montague islands. Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, told Alaska's KTUU TV that "It's a staggering mess [...] the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I've been looking at this stuff a long time."

In an email to The SunBreak, Pallister let loose:

In my opinion, this is the single greatest environmental pollution event that has ever hit the west coast of North America. The slow-motion aspects of it have fooled an unwitting public. It far exceeds the Santa Barbara or Exxon Valdez oil spills in gross tonnage and also geographic scope. (I was in Prince William Sound during the during the Exxon Valdez oil spill and so have a sense of comparison).

Tens of thousands of miles of coastline from California to the Aleutian Islands are going to be hit with billions of pounds of toxic debris. NOAA's latest estimate is that 1.5 million tons of largely plastic debris will hit the western United States coast. That is 30 billion pounds. We expect Alaska to get the largest percentage of that with much of it lodging on northern Gulf of Alaska beaches. Most of this will be plastic which is full of inherent toxic chemicals that will leach into the environment for generations.

Possibly worse are the millions of containers full of anything from household chemicals to toxic industrial chemicals that are floating our way. They will eventually burst upon our shores...in sensitive inter-tidal spawning and rearing habitat, endangering shorebirds, marine mammals, fish and everything in between. We are already finding empty and partially full containers of tsunami related chemicals and fuel drums along the northern Gulf of Alaska shoreline. The heavier fuller containers will come later because the wind doesn't push them as fast toward the Gulf of Alaska as they are more current driven. The light-weight, high-windage debris such as Styrofoam, buoys, bottles, empty containers and drums have already arrived in staggering quantities.

Everyone is careful to say the debris is only "suspected" of having come from Japan's March 2011 tsunami; there is plenty of marine debris on the ocean in general. Here is Pallister on the scope of the everyday marine debris problem.

• Evidence was found in a rare mineral that records global temperatures
• Warming was far-reaching and NOT limited to Europe
• Throws doubt on orthodoxies around 'global warming'

Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times areas as far apart as Europe and Antarctica both warmed up.

It then cooled down naturally and there was even a 'mini ice age'.

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that the 'Medieval Warm Period' approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn't just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica.

More than 32 Yangtze finless porpoises have been found dead in the Dongting and Poyang lakes in China in the last two months, leading wildlife experts to worry whether the rare animals are being pushed closer to extinction, the World Wildlife Fund has reported.

Yangtze finless porpoises live mainly in the freshwater Yangtze River and the two lakes, where the bodies of more than 32 of them have been found since March 3. One of the porpoises was pregnant, according to the blog Save Yangtze Finless Porpoise.

"This tragedy shows that Yangtze finless porpoise is facing enormous challenges," said Lei Gang, head of WWF China's Central Yangtze program, in a statement. "The porpoise deaths illustrate that without effective measures to fundamentally reverse the trend of ecological deterioration, [the] future of the incredible creature is far from certain."

After examining the dead porpoises, scientists were left with a long list of possible culprits, including electro-fishing, strikes by boat-engine propellers, food shortages and pollution.

In electro-fishing, which is illegal, people use storage batteries to fire huge electric charges into the Yangtze and then collect the dead fish that float to the surface, according to an EDGE blog entry by Sam Turvey, who has studied wildlife along the Yangtze, including the Yangtze dolphin or baiji.

Date-Time
Tuesday, May 01, 2012 at 22:43:37 UTC

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 at 05:43:37 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
14.466°N, 92.909°W

Depth
36.3 km (22.6 miles)

Region
OFFSHORE CHIAPAS, MEXICO

Distances
93 km (57 miles) SW of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico

163 km (101 miles) WSW of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

189 km (117 miles) WSW of Huehuetenango, Guatemala

861 km (535 miles) SE of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico

Date-Time
Tuesday, May 01, 2012 at 16:38:00 UTC
Tuesday, May 01, 2012 at 11:38:00 AM at epicenter Location
18.521°N, 100.886°W

Depth
77.6 km (48.2 miles)

Region
MICHOACAN, MEXICO

Distances
7 km (4 miles) S (185°) from Huetamo, Michoacán, Mexico

33 km (21 miles) NW (312°) from Altamirano,Guerrero, Mexico

70 km (44 miles) WNW (292°) from Arcelia, Guerrero, Mexico

133 km (83 miles) S (169°) from Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico

206 km (128 miles) WSW (241°) from MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico

Dhubri, India - Army divers and rescue workers pulled 103 bodies out of a river after a packed ferry boat capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote northeast India, an official said Tuesday.

At least 100 people were still missing Tuesday after the boat carrying about 350 passengers broke into two pieces late Monday, said Pritam Saikia, the district magistrate of Goalpara district.

Deep sea divers and disaster rescue soldiers worked through the night to pull bodies from the Brahmaputra River in Assam state.

Heavy winds and rain hampered rescue operations, said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, Assam's top elected official.

"I will be ordering an inquiry into the cause of the accident, but right now our priority is to account for every person who was on the ferry," Gogoi said.

Around 150 passengers swam to safety or were rescued by villagers, said Saikia, who was supervising the rescue operations.

An estimated 1.5 million tonnes of flotsam believed to be headed to Canada


A beachcomber on British Columbia's Haida Gwaii islands has discovered what may be the first piece of debris from the Japanese tsunami to arrive in Canada.

Peter Mark was riding his ATV, exploring an isolated beach on Graham Island on April 18, when he made a spectacular find.

"You just never know what you're going to stumble upon when you go for a drive, and lo and behold you just come across something that's out of this world," he said.

Mark found a large white cube, like the back part of a moving truck, just below the high tide mark.

"The door was ripped off it and I could see a motorcycle tire sticking out," he said. "So I went closer and looked inside and saw a Harley-Davidson motorcycle."