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New volcanic isle joins with nearby island

9 Comments

A smouldering islet created by undersea volcanic eruptions off Japan's Pacific coast has melded to a nearby island, the Japanese coast guard said Thursday.

Officials overflying the new landmass said it had merged at two points with Nishino-shima, an uninhabited volcanic island in the Ogasawara (Bonin) chain, some 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo.

Two craters on the islet have been erupting "at an interval of 30 seconds to one minute," spewing brown smoke about 100 meters high, a coast guard statement said.

Pale volcanic gas and ash-grey smoke are also oozing out.

The islet was first spotted on Nov 20, some 200 meters from Nishino-shima.

It is now sized about 450 meters from east to west and 500 meters from north to south, with ground space measuring about 0.15 square kilometers, the statement said.

"The amount of volcanic smoke has apparently grown with a continuous flow of lava," Tokyo Institute of Technology geology professor Kenji Nogami reported from the plane. "The supply of magma from the deep subsurface is presumably increasing."

Similar eruptions in the early 1970s and mid-80s created tiny islets in Japan's territory that have since been partially or completely eaten up by the ocean.

While the new formation is in uncontested waters, its emergence comes as Tokyo is embroiled in a row with Beijing over the sovereignty of a small archipelago in the East China Sea. The sudden appearance sparked quips from ministers about the expansion of Japan's territorial waters.

© (c) 2013 AFP

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9 Comments
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YES! That beautiful new piece of property shall be mine - a growing neighbourhood with every passing day. Where do I sign the papers?

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

@TrevorPeace1. When you buy it and after the island and ocean stabalizes can I go scuba diving there? I've been to Ogasawara and that part of the ocean is just gorgeous.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

I'm pretty interested in this place. It's going to be in cool watching to see just how big it's going to get.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Very cool stuff.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

When is china gonna claim it? Sure would like to take a helicopter ride around it before they do

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Very soon it will stretch to nearby America. Will the Americans tolerate an extended AIDZ?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This harkens to our deep ancestral being - we instinctively know what the creation of new territory means.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

While the new formation is in uncontested waters, its emergence comes as Tokyo is embroiled in a row with Beijing over the sovereignty of a small archipelago in the East China Sea. The sudden appearance sparked quips from ministers about the expansion of Japan’s territorial waters.

AFP again. This natural event has nothing to do with China, or Taiwan, or the Koreas yet AFP felt they had to slip something in about it.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Makes me think of Hawaii. That's one of the tourist attractions. Continuously erupting volcanoes.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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