A ‘ghost’ island that abruptly appeared within the Caspian Sea in early 2023 is enjoying a centuries-long recreation of peekaboo with scientists, and it is about to fade as soon as once more – if it hasn’t already slipped beneath the waves.
Pictures from two NASA satellites present a time-lapse of the island’s disappearing act, from its sudden emergence between January and February of 2023 to the tiny fragment left on the finish of 2024.
The island is situated on the tip of the Kumani financial institution mud volcano, situated underwater off the coast of Azerbaijan. On random events, when this volcano blows, an island of mud breaks by means of the waves and reforms about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the mainland.
The short-term land mass was first documented in Might 1861. However the subsequent 12 months, it was gone.
Within the twentieth century, the island got here and went not less than six additional occasions, in line with data. The truth is, the blob of land hardly ever sticks round for longer than two years, earlier than slipping beneath the waves.
Typically, mud volcano eruptions are marked by large, rocketing jets of fireside, that are so intimidatingly violent, they’ll generally be mistaken for oil rig explosions.
In 2023, nonetheless, the ghost island peeked its head above the waves with out a lot of a fuss.
“A new island suddenly appeared last year, which is amazing,” wrote geophysicist and dirt volcano fanatic Mark Tingay on Threads in November of 2024.
“But what is even more amazing is that nobody seemed to notice!”
By no one, Tingay meant there have been no official data of the island’s look – simply satellite tv for pc photographs he had observed final 12 months whereas learning the mud volcano hotspot that’s Azerbaijan. On the time, in 2023, Tingay stated he could not discover any information, social media, or web mentions of the island’s varied names in Azeri, Russian, or English.
On January 10, 2025, NASA picked an image of the ghost island as its picture of the day.
This wasn’t the one time that the Kumani island has caught scientists abruptly, both.
Tingay says the Kumani mud volcano additionally fashioned an island with no fireball in 1993, and it, too, went formally unreported. Satellite tv for pc photographs, nonetheless, clearly present it was seen at the moment.
“In this current information age, where everyone is so instantly connected, it is also rather incredible that an island can pop up just 20km off the coast and no one even says anything about it!” writes Tingay on Threads.
