The Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography, on Friday, said that the only live volcano of India in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had remained dormant for 150 years before 1991, is live again. The volcano which has been showing activities since 1991 and it has been spewing out ash and lava sporadically.
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The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) said in a statement, "The only live volcano in the Andaman and Nicobar islands is erupting once again. The Barren Island volcano, located 140-km north-east of Port Blair, dormant for more than 150 years started erupting in 1991 and has since then shown intermittent activity."
The volcano started to spit out ash when researchers from the CSIR-NIO were on the Barren Island volcano.
"On the afternoon of January 23, 2017, the scientific team on board CSIR-NIO's research ship R V Sindhu Sankalp were busy collecting sea floor samples in the Andaman Basin near the Barren volcano when it suddenly started spewing ash," CSIR-NIO added.
The team moved about one mile from the volcano and observed the volcano closely, which kept erupting in small episodes for about five to 10 minutes. While only emissions of ash were observed during the daytime, the team noticed that red lava fountains were spewing from the crater into the atmosphere and hot lava was streaming down the slopes of the volcano.
A team, headed by Dr. B.Nagender Nath, led a second leg of the cruise to the Barren Island volcano on January 26.
From a safe distance, the team observed spurts of blasts and smoke. The team sampled the sediments and water in the vicinity of the volcano and recovered coal-like black pyroclastic material representing proximal volcanic ejecta.
While the rest of the sky remained clear, cloud formation was seen at the crater mouth where the smoke was billowing out.
