Volcano and Caldera
The volcano itself is a submarine volcano lying underwater between the two islands, which are the remnants of the western and northern rim of the volcano's caldera. The two islands (part of the Haʻapai group) are about 1.6 km (0.99 mi) apart, and each is about 2 km (1.2 mi) long and composed largely of andesite. Hunga Tonga reaches an elevation of 149 m (489 feet), while Hunga Haʻapai comes to only 128 m (420 feet) above sea level. Neither island is large: Hunga Tonga is roughly 39 hectares (0.15 square miles) and Hunga Haʻapai is 65 hectares (0.25 square miles) in size. Neither island is developed due to a lack of an acceptable anchorage, although there are large guano deposits on each island.
Submarine eruptions at a rocky shoal about 3.2 km (2.0 mi) southeast of Hunga Haʻapai and 3 km (1.9 mi) south of Hunga Tonga were reported in 1912 and 1937. Another eruption occurred from a fissure 1 km (0.62 mi) south-southeast of Hunga Haʻapai in 1988.
The islands figure in Tongan mythology as one of the few islands which were not overfished, and hence thrown down from heaven to land on earth. Tongans called them the islands which "jump back and forth" (i.e. suffer earthquakes). The first Europeans to see the islands were those with the Dutch explorers Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire in 1616, although the British explorer Captain James Cook visited them several times in 1777 and learned their Tongan names.
Read more about this topic: Hunga Tonga
Famous quotes containing the word volcano:
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)