Antarctica Reveals String of Underwater Volcanoes

In one of the first studies of its type ever conducted, researchers were able to discover a string of volcanoes underneath the frigid water of Antarctica. More than a dozen such volcanoes were found, of which some are still active.

Others reach up to 3,000 meters (roughly 10,000 feet) in altitude, even though their entire span is submerged. Investigators say that no other research team was able to discover such structures in this region in the past.

The findings are made all the more important by the fact that no one suspected these mountains were there. Furthermore, not even geologists caught the faintest hint that a relatively large number of active volcanoes may still exist underneath the waters surrounding the Southern Continent.

Interestingly, some of these mountains are very close to the water surface. Given that experts were able to find mountains at greater depths, their inability to identify this mountain chain until now is all the more puzzling. “That's a big volcano. That's a very big volcano,” Philip Leat explains.

“If that was on land it would be quite remarkable,” adds the expert, who holds an appointment as a volcanologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). He was the leader of the seafloor mapping campaign between 2007 and 2010.

The 12-mountain group can be found south of the South Sandwich Islands, halfway between South America and South Africa. Researchers who discovered them were as surprised as anybody else when the volcanoes appeared on their sonars.

“We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't go trying to find volcanoes. 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,” Leat tells Our Amazing Planet.

“So it's very exciting. 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,” the expert goes on to say. He adds that one of the underwater summits came so close to the surface that it looked as if the ship will be damaged.

Some of these peaks come as close as 160 feet (50 meters) of the ocean's surface, which is very near, even posing a navigational hazard for large ships. The first anecdotal evidence that volcanoes existed here came from a vessel that went through the area in 1962 and saw an eruption.