KamaʻehuakanaloaAn island still under the sea
About 30 kilometres off the Big Island's southeast coast, a new volcano is growing on the sea floor. Kamaʻehuakanaloa, formerly known as Lōʻihi, rises from the deep ocean, and its summit still lies about 969 metres below the surface. It was renamed in 2021 by the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names, and its name evokes the reddish child of Kanaloa, the god of the ocean.
It is the youngest volcano of the Hawaiian chain and sits closest to the hotspot. Scientists expect it will take many thousands of years to reach the surface, by which time it may well have merged with the Big Island.
Life at the ventsEarthquakes, submarines and microbes
Its last confirmed eruption came in 1996, announced by one of the largest earthquake swarms ever recorded in Hawaii. Research submarines that dived afterwards found a new pit crater on its summit, named Pele's Pit, where the volcano had collapsed.
Around its hot springs, iron-rich water feeds mats of microbes that coat the rocks in rust-orange, and scientists study them as a window into how life may have begun on the early Earth. The volcano is monitored by instruments and the occasional research cruise; it is the one Hawaiian volcano no visitor will ever stand on, at least for a few thousand years.
