Yeah, don’t be swimming around that. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
When Devon Massyn began preparing for an expedition to the Solomon Islands to film sharks around one of the most active submarine volcanoes in the world, he expected to see crazy things. Crazy things like sharks and other sea life that exists in one of the most remote parts on the planet, not crazy things like an underwater volcano erupting. But guess what? He stumbled into the latter.
Volcanic eruptions are crazy things. Think about what’s happening under our feet for a second. Molten rock flowing around deep inside the Earth is getting driven upwards by immense gas pressure. As it nears the surface, dissolved gasses turn into bubbles, which builds the pressure further and further until the magma finds its way to a weak part of the Earth’s crust. It shoves it all upwards until finally it shoots skyward, bringing all the immense power and pressure from the guts of the planet to the surface. There are plenty of volcanoes above on land, but it’s easy to forget that there are even more on the ocean floor.
The volcano that Massyn was diving around is called Kavachi, and it is not a quiet one. It is sometimes called the “Sharkcano,” not because it’s an awesome name, but because sharks thrive in its warm, acidic water. Just south of Vangunu Island, the thing is almost constantly pumping out steam, ash, and lava. But it’s remote, not many people get to see it explode.
“Because of its isolation, no one had been there in over two years, so we had no idea what we would find or if the volcano was even active at the surface,” Massyn wrote. “You are quickly reminded of the intense power of the Earth here. Even while scuba diving more than 50 miles away, we could hear its ominous underwater explosions.”
Getting to Kavachi’s zone is not an easy journey. And once you’re there, things don’t get much easier. “Reaching these dangerous waters required extreme logistics,” Massyn continued. “We had to carry drums of fuel on the boat just to get there, knowing that once we committed, there was no easy way out. Before entering the water, we launched a drone to track the direction of the constant flow of sulfuric acid, making sure we wouldn’t get cooked alive while diving.”
But once they were there, the footage they captured was nothing short of incredible.
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