First pictures of Tonga's newly-formed volcanic island

March 11, 2015

Sam Bolitho for Australian Broadcast

Article

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A new island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? This is occurring since January in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. An island that Belongs to the island of Tonga is being formed by a volcano that erupted underwater is creating an island that has been growing for only some months, but already has reached a size that can be seen as something quite large. The mountains on top of the island are said to be about 250 meters high, and the island is about 800 meters wide and 1.3Kilometers long. This has only been formed since January, when in that place, a volcano erupted causing this Island to form. On the other hand, it has formed itself about 65 Kilometers away from the capital of Tonga.

As Tonga is a quite small Island, and I didn’t quite know too much information about Tonga, I decided to do some research about it. Tonga is an Island group that belongs to the continent of Oceania, so it is relatively close to Australia. It is also situated quite close to the International Date Line, where the day changes to be the day before the one on Tonga. Also they have 100,000 Inhabitants on Mainly the main Island, as this is the largest one of the whole Island chains, and its capital is Nuku’alofa. The country of Tonga is situated quite near to the other Island groups like Fiji and the other Islands that belong to Oceania.

Figure 1- A view onto the Island

Nevertheless, the article speaks about the discoverers of the Island. His name is GP Orbassano, who is a Hotel owner in Tonga. He and his son have went on the Island and have said to be the first ones to enter onto the island, as it looks like no one else has discovered this Island yet. Although he has lived in Tonga for more than 20 years, he says "This was a great location. It's not every day a new island appears in the middle of the ocean." This means that not everyday a new Island can be found in the middle of the Ocean. The downside with this is, that Orbassano wants to partially use this Island to attract tourists to Tonga, this means that the Natural environment could be destroyed on this island. This is due to that the succession is still in a full process. He claims that there are thousands of seabirds on the island, which means that they probably have brought seeds or so with them so that the Island will be habitable by animals.

Figure 2- A picture on the Island

I personally think about this article, that it is very impressive that someone has discovered a newly formed Island. This is due to that not every day a new island is just found in the middle of nowhere, due to that there are not many big islands around this small and newly formed Island. Yet on the other hand, I think that it is not such a good idea to use this Island as a tourist attraction, due to that the succession of the Island could be disturbed, as then maybe animals from outside the region could be brought in, or even that the Birds stop coming to the Island which would then mean that the Island would never be habitable in the near future. But in all, I think that this is a very impressive discovery, as the Island is very new, and not discovered before.