New Island Emerges Off Japan After Powerful Underwater Volcano Eruption

Yet another phoenix-like island has risen from the volcanic ashes of the Ring of Fire – this time off the coast of Japan's Ogasawara Islands, a far-flung archipelago also known as the Bonin Islands.

The fresh new land mass in the Pacific Ocean is the youngest of all its neighbors and was born from an ongoing undersea volcanic eruption that began on October 21st.

Volcanologist Setsuya Nakada from the University of Tokyo told The Japan Times that the underwater volcanic eruption that formed the island started as a "vertical jet" of solidified magma that shot high above the waves.

After that, the eruption was sustained by relatively continuous bursts.