Scientists Unearth New Antarctic Volcano

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2004 (ENS) - Scientists have discovered an active and previously unknown volcano deep in the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula.

A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers mapped and sampled the ocean floor and collected video and data that indicate the volcano's existence.

They announced the finding earlier this month in a dispatch from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould, which is operated by the National Science Foundation.

Evidence of the volcano came as an unintended bonus from a research plan to investigate why a massive ice sheet, known as the Larsen B, collapsed and broke up several years ago.

Scientists hope to understand whether such a collapse is unique or part of a cycle that extends over hundreds of thousands of years.

Scientific evidence the team collected also corroborates mariners' reports of discolored water in the area, which is consistent with an active volcano.

The volcano stands 2,300 feet above the seafloor and extends to within some 900 feet of the ocean surface, according to Eugene Domack, a researcher at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and the expedition's chief scientist.

By comparison Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, rises some 13,600 feet above sea level and Mexico's Cuexcomate volcano - considered to be the world's smallest - stands 43 feet tall.

Domack estimated that the volcanic cone of the newly discovered volcano contains at least .36 cubic miles of volcanic rock.

The volcano lies in an area known as Antarctic Sound, at the northernmost tip of Antarctica.

Domack said there has been "no previous scientific record of active volcanoes in the region" where the new peak was discovered and that it is north of an existing boundary where volcanic activity is known to occur in the region.

The volcano, which has yet to be named, also is unusual, Domack said, in that it exists on the continental shelf, in the vicinity of a deep trough carved out by glaciers passing across the seafloor.

The researchers expect there will be interest among other scientists to return to the area and study the peak in more detail.

"None of us on this cruise," Domack said, "are experts in volcanoes."