A dangerous underwater volcano has been found by a team of scientists who have been exploring the darkest of a enormous underwater volcano in the Caribbean with goals set to understand the mysteries of earthquakes and tsunamis for the possibly of saving lives.
The active volcano, called Kick’em Jenny, is sitting approximately 6,000 feet below the surface of the Caribbean Sea and it’s said to be dangerous. It is located off the coast of the island of Grenada, south of St. Lucia.
Robert Ballard, famous for discovering the Titanic 12,000 feet below the surface of the icy North Atlantic in 1985, has set his sights on the exploration of the Kick’em Jenny in an effort to study its eruption history and to learn more about how underwater volcanoes could pose a threat to people.
Ballard who is the President of The Ocean Exploration Trust and the director of the Center for Ocean Exploration at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, said, “The Kick’em Jenny volcano has a history of explosive eruptions, which might have the potential to trigger tsunamis, the effects from which could be felt as far away as the northeastern United States.”
The Kick’em Jenny volcano has erupted 10 times since 1939 with a most recent eruption in 1990, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Ballard continued to say, “This is the most hazardous part of our planet, where (tectonic) plates are head-on.” He also noted that the devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami were both the results of underwater earthquakes.
Barbara Kasey Smith is the writer of this article based on a report on ABC News.
Source:
ABC News