Sea mounts

Prior to 15 January, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai was a little-known undersea South Pacific volcano with a long name. Within 24 hours, it  was a global phenomenon – the site of the largest atmospheric explosion in almost 150 years. Jessica Rowley looks at why a remote Tongan volcano took the world by storm.

Stacy Mohan looks at how the shockwaves from a remote Tongan island rippled through NIWA’s research community.

Our team onboard RV Tangaroa are equipped with all the tech and tools they need to explore the undersea changes caused by the devastating volcanic eruption in Tonga earlier this year.

The January eruption of the Tongan volcano Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha’apai triggered tsunamis as far away as the Caribbean. NIWA scientists are onboard RV Tangaroa surveying the ocean around the volcano, working to understand the largest eruption of its kind since 1981 so they can help increase our knowledge about similar volcanoes around the world.

A large, orange Scandinavian robot gives NIWA’s marine geologists an in-depth look at changes to the seafloor off Kaikōura.

Seamounts, knolls, and hills are prominent features of underwater topography in the New Zealand region and are often sites of high biodiversity and productivity.

At the bottom of the Southern Ocean, near Cape Adare in East Antarctica, lies an undersea ridge which until this month was only known by its co-ordinates: -71.2132 latitude, 172.1649 longitude.

Massive increases in computing power are allowing NIWA scientists to not only analyse more data, faster, but also to envisage completely new experiments.

We are currently steaming out towards our survey area, the Louisville Seamount Chain, which is about 1500 km from Wellington.