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A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active,
has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first
such discovery in that region.
Some of the peaks tower nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above
the ocean
floor — nearly tall enough to break the water's
surface.
"That's a big volcano. That's a very big
volcano. If that was on land it would be quite
remarkable," said Philip Leat, a vulcanologist with the British
Antarctic Survey who led a seafloor mapping expedition to the
region in 2007 and 2010.
The group of 12 underwater
mountains lies south of the South Sandwich Islands —
desolate, ice-covered volcanoes that rise above the southern
Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa
and erupted as recently as 2008. It's the first time such a large
number of undersea volcanoes has been found together in the
Antarctic region.
Leat said the survey team was somewhat surprised by the
find.
"We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't
go trying to find volcanoes," Leat told OurAmazingPlanet. "We just
went because there was a big blank area on the map and we had no
idea what was there; we just wanted to fill in the seafloor."
Seafloor surprise
The team did so, thanks to ship-borne seafloor
mapping technology, and not without a few hair-raising
adventures.
Leat said the images of the seafloor appear before your eyes on
screens as the ship moves through the water. "So it's very
exciting," he said. "You go along and suddenly you see the bottom
start to rise up underneath you, and you don't know how shallow
it's going to get."
At one point, in the dead of night, the team encountered a
volcano so large it looked as though the RRS James Clark Ross, the
team's research vessel, might actually crash into the hidden
summit. "It was quite frightening, actually," Leat said.
The researchers stopped the ship and decided to return in
daylight. The onboard instruments revealed that some of the peaks
rise within 160 feet (50 meters) of the ocean's surface. [Related:
The World's Biggest Oceans and
Seas]
Volcanoes confirmed
Though the peaks are largely invisible without the aid of 3-D
mapping technology, scientists can tell they're volcanoes.
Leat said their conelike silhouette is a dead giveaway. "There's
no other way of getting that shape on the seafloor," he said. In
addition, the researchers dredged up rocky material from several
peaks and found it rife with volcanic ash, lumps of pumice and
black lava.
The find backed up reports from a ship that visited the area in
1962, which indicated a hidden volcano had erupted in the
region.
Leat's biologist colleagues discovered some interesting creatures living in
the hot-spring-like conditionsnear the underwater
mountains, and news on that will be forthcoming, Leat said.
Despite the frozen, isolated conditions, Leat said the
expeditions were far from boring. Quite the opposite, in fact. Each
moment, a hidden world never before seen by humans unfolded before
their eyes.
"It's amazing," Leat said, "and you can hardly go to bed at
night because you want to see what's happening."