Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Japan is made up of nearly 7,000 islands, but the permanence of these islands is often called into question. Some of these islands are created from undersea volcanoes, but as they can appear quickly, so can they disappear.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper took a light plane to visit an island created by an underwater volcano but it was no longer visible from the air.

Only breaking waves can be seen in the area where the new island was created by an underwater volcano. Nothing is visible of the island created by the Fukutoku-Okanoba underwater volcano, although a thin line of pumice was seen floating in the area near where the island was created.

The Asahi Shimbun’s Asuka light aircraft on Jan. 6 flew over the Fukutoku-Okanoba underwater volcano just north of Minami-Iwojima island in the Ogasawara island chain that lies about 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo.

While accumulated lava could be seen just under the waves, Setsuya Nakada, who heads the Center for Integrated Volcano Research at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, observed that even at low tide, when the flight was made, no land mass emerged above the water surface.

A full-scale eruption at Fukutoku-Okanoba on Aug. 13 sent plumes of smoke and ash to heights of 16 km. It was the largest eruption in about a century. A flight over Fukutoku-Okanoba in October showed evidence of a layered foundation created by lava. But this time it was nowhere to be seen, having been eroded by the waves.

The Japan Coast Guard confirmed the first appearance of a new island in 35 years. Fukutoku-Okanoba had created tiny islets in the past after eruptions in 1904, 1914 and 1986. However, those also eventually submerged through erosion due to the soft nature of the lava.