An Underwater Volcano Off the Coast of New Zealand Just Created a New Island Overnight

An Underwater Volcano Off the Coast of New Zealand Just Created a New Island Overnight

There was no island at Home Reef on September 10, 2022. There was by the next morning. A mass of freshly cooled lava rising from the Pacific, trailing steam and discoloring the surrounding water with ash and pumice in an expanding plume visible from space, rather than a sandbar or a boulder breaching the surface at low tide. The seamount, one of dozens of undersea volcanoes grouped in the Pacific Ring of Fire’s Tonga Archipelago stretch, had bee…