Sea Surprise You don’t have to travel far to find the next odd volcano. Just dive into the cold sea off Antarctica. As you drop down through the water, you see what looks like the top of a mountain. T en you see another and another. It’s a line of a dozen volcanoes rising from the seafloor. T ey’re hidden under the water. Here’s the really odd thing. Until a few years


ago, no one knew these giant volcanoes existed. T en scientists began to map the seafloor. T ey crossed the area in a boat. T ey took images of the seafloor. T e images showed giant volcanoes just


under their boat. Some rose nearly 3 km above the seafloor. T ey looked almost tall enough to break through the waves! T at discovery surprised the scientists. Maps


made earlier showed only deep water here. T e discovery scared them, too. T ey


worried their boats could have slammed into the volcano tops. Luckily, there’s still enough space to float over the volcanoes. One more eruption, though, and these volcanoes may grow enough to poke up out of the sea.


Deep Slide Like many volcanoes, these sea volcanoes formed at the boundary of two plates. Long ago, these plates slammed into one another. T e edge of one plate slid under the other one. It dove down into Earth toward the mantle. T is process is called subduction. T e deeper the land dove, the hotter it got.


Eventually, this chunk of Earth’s rocky crust got so hot that it began to melt. T e rock turned into magma. T is magma pushed back up towards Earth’s surface. It bubbled out on the seafloor, forming the undersea volcanoes. Now these undersea volcanoes are on the


map. You won’t bump into them by accident. It’s not entirely safe to visit them, though. Hot gases bubble from their vents. Crabs, snails, and other critters who live there like it hot and steamy. Getting too close could be risky for you, though. T e bubbling water is hot enough to melt lead. It’s filled with toxic chemicals. T at’s not the only danger here. One or


more of these volcanoes could erupt. Its gases, rocks, and lava could explode out of the water. Maybe it’s time to visit another volcano.


Volcano Hall of Fame


Tallest active volcano: Mauna Loa in Hawaii


Longest ongoing eruption: Stromboli in Italy for 2,000 years


Biggest eruption ever recorded: Tambora in Indonesia in 1815


Stromboli erupts. 20 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXTREME EXPLORER


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