A volcano is just about the unlikeliest place to find a bunch of animals, right? A National Geographic team led by ocean engineer Brennan Phillips took off to the Solomon Islands – and specifically the active underwater volcano Kavachi – to get a glimpse of some interesting hydrothermal activity. What the team didn’t expect to find was a thriving submarine volcano community.

The team dropped an 80-pound camera into the water and let it sink 147 feet below the surface into Kavachi’s crater. Keeping in mind that the volcano is active and could erupt at any time, they only kept the camera and other instruments submerged for about an hour. When they got a look at the footage, they saw some pretty amazing sights: a group of jellyfish, a few varieties of fish, a sixgill stingray, and both silky and scalloped hammerhead sharks.

Phillips points out that you never really know what you’re going to find in an alien underwater environment. The team now has a whole bunch of new questions to work on – like how the animals survive in the very warm, acidic environment and whether they know to scram when the volcano is about to erupt…or if they just burn up in the magma when Kavachi blows its top.

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Volcanoes are a devastating force that can rip apart the land around them, cover the surrounding area in ash, even temporarily block out the sun’s light. We’ve all probably seen pictures and videos of volcano eruptions, but this image of Sarychev Peak on Matua Island erupting is even more special. It was captured on June 12, 2009 by the International Space Station, which just happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch this unique and incredible picture. The image shows the volcanic plume rising into the sky, but it also shows a fluffy cloud among the volcanic ash, which is probably condensed water vapor rising with the ash. The image also shows a kind of shock wave as the clouds are pushed back from the force of the eruption. Volcanologists are excited about these unique images because they show several phenomena that occur in the early stages of a large eruption.

The above images show Matua Island before the eruption (in May 2007) and just after the eruption. In the left image, the red indicates vegetation, the black indicates water, and clouds, ice and water vapor are white. The gray to dark brown areas indicate volcanic rock, both from old lava flows and from the recent vegetation. Clearly, after the eruption the northwest corner of the island is covered in volcanic ash. Additionally, the coastline appears to have extended a small amount from the new ash and rock deposits. These amazing photos and others like them have contributed untold amounts of new information to our understanding of how volcanoes work, and they wouldn’t have been possible without the technology that allows us to keep an eye on Earth from space.

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