The coast guard has warned vessels sailing in waters off eastern Taiwan to beware of floating volcanic rocks from the Japan-controlled Ogasawara Islands following an undersea eruption in the western Pacific Ocean island chain in August.
The pumices have been spotted floating along the coast of Hualien County from Shihtiping (石梯坪) to Cisingtan Beach (七星潭), with the largest of them the size of a tennis ball, Coast Guard officer Yang Shih-feng (楊仕逢) of the East Branch of the Coast Guard Administration said yesterday.
The rocks float on water because of their porous nature, and while some are as a big as a tennis ball, most of them are the size of pebbles and are easily sucked into ships’ engines, potentially causing substantial damage, Yang added.
Photo: CNA
There were no signs that the volcanic rocks have damaged the environment in Hualien, Yang said, urging people to report sightings of the rocks to local authorities and reminding boats in the region to be vigilant.
Pumice is volcanic rock that is produced when lava with a high content of water and gases is discharged from a volcano, and then cools and hardens, resulting in a very light rock material filled with tiny bubbles of gas.
At the end of last month, government agencies were notified that the volcanic rocks had drifted into 16 coastal areas in Pingtung and Taitung counties, as well as Taitung County’s Green Island (綠島) and Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), Yang said.
The agencies said that the pumices originated from an undersea volcanic eruption in the middle of August in the Ogasawaras, also known as the Bonin Islands, a chain of volcanic islands about 2,000km east-northeast of Taipei.
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