A mile beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, something is shifting. The Axial Seamount, an undersea volcano about 300 miles off the Oregon coast, is swelling, quaking, and almost certainly gearing up to erupt. It’s really not a matter of if…more like when.
Researchers say the signs are stacking up. “It’s at or almost at that inflation threshold where it erupted last time,” volcanologist Bill Chadwick told KGW. “So, we think it’s ready.” The volcano sits on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where tectonic plates rip apart the seafloor and hot magma creeps upward. Right now, it’s triggering hundreds of small earthquakes every day.
The West Coast has lived with the looming threat of the “Big One” for decades—a catastrophic earthquake tied to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. But this isn’t that. Axial Seamount erupts often, and it does so without causing surface-level destruction. No tsunamis, no ash clouds. Just lava reshaping the seafloor and hydrothermal vents belching out mineral-rich gas.
And this time, scientists are planning to livestream it.
Axial’s last eruption, in 2015, produced around 10,000 earthquakes in a single day. Lava flowed for nearly a month, torching the strange organisms clinging to the seafloor. But within weeks, new life moved in—proof that even in the harshest conditions, ecosystems find a way. “Life thrives in these inhospitable environments,” marine geologist Debbie Kelley told CNN. “Volcanoes are probably one of the major sources of life in our oceans.”
The magma chamber sits unusually close to the ocean floor, making Axial ideal for observation. Cameras and sensors on the Regional Cabled Array—660 miles of underwater cable loaded with instruments—are ready to capture the next blow. For researchers, it’s a rare chance to watch a volcano build, break, and reset in real-time.
Oddly, timing may not just depend on magma pressure. Past eruptions happened when Earth was drifting away from the sun, and some scientists think gravitational forces—like the pull of the moon on ocean tides—might help trigger the final rupture. It’s a reminder that what happens below sometimes syncs with what’s happening above.
The Earth is always moving under our feet. Most of the time, we just can’t see it. This eruption might finally change that.
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