Largest underwater eruption in history creates new monster volcano

A massive earthquake activity that began in May 2018 and was felt all around the world has given rise to a new undersea volcano. The massive new structure rises 820 metres (2,690 feet) from the seafloor off the eastern coast of Mayotte, which surfaced after an earthquake that shook the island in May 2018.

Researchers are using the new feature, which is likely to be part of a tectonic structure between the East African and Madagascar rifts, to better comprehend inner Earth mechanisms about which very little is known.

The continuing event's earthquake thuds commenced on 10 May, 2018. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck a few days later, on May 15, shaking the surrounding island.

Scientists were previously baffled, but didn't take too long to realise that a massive volcanic eruption had taken place, unlike anything ever observed. The readings indicated a spot about 50 kilometres off the coast of Mayotte, a French province that lies in the volcanic Comoros islands situated among both Africa's east coast and Madagascar's north part.

The discovery was achieved by a team of researchers headed by geophysicist Nathalie Feuillet of the University of Paris in France. In February of 2019, the team began investigating the area. The researchers also installed a series of seismometers on the seabed, reaching depths of up to 3.5 kilometers, and merged the findings with Mayotte seismic readings.

Pic courtesy: ScienceAlert

This technology observed 17,000 seismic occurrences between February 25 and May 6, 2019, at depths ranging from 20 to 50 km underneath the water's surface.

It all began with a lava pool buried deep within the asthenosphere, the hot mantle layer right beneath Earth's lithosphere. Damage to the lithosphere may have resulted from tectonic forces beneath, resulting in seawalls that flowed molten from a source up through the crust, causing waves of earthquakes. This sediment later spread to the seafloor, where it erupted, resulting in 5 cubic kilometres of magma and the creation of a new volcano.

The Mayotte eruption is the largest underwater seismic outburst in history. The total volume of the new volcanic structure is between 30 to 1,000 times bigger than prior deep-sea eruptions, according to estimates from May 2019.