SYDNEY: A team of scientists from five different countries are about to embark on a voyage to a huge underwater volcano that has been producing tonnes of pumice stone which has washed up on beaches in Australia and New Zealand.
The volcano was located by chance in 2012 when an airline passenger identified huge amounts of the light pumice rock floating in the ocean.
Since its discovery researchers have been monitoring it remotely using satellites and aircraft.
But vulcanologist Dr Rebecca Carey from the University of Tasmania is one of the researchers who will get a closer look at the volcano during a sea voyage.
“Since March 2014 we’ve had reports all across the state of volcanic pumice arriving on beaches,” she said.
“So the community have engaged us in basically trying to explain where this pumice is coming from, because there’s been massive amounts arriving on Flinders Island and the east coast of Tasmania.
“We actually know where this volcanic pumice has come from, because we know the source of the eruption and it arrived on the east coast of Australia about a year earlier.
“The source of the pumice is a volcano in the Kermadec arc, which is about 1,000 kilometres north of New Zealand.”
