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WONDERS OF NATURE
Deception Island. Nature miracle
Off the cold coast of Antarctica, near the Antarctic Peninsula, aiming its sharp beak towards South America, the volcanic ridge of the South Shetland Islands is located. Their intricately indented coastal steeps are painted in two colors: black and fluent. Near the water, the blued crust of basalts is covered with snow sastrugi, and glaciers are located on the mountainous middle parts of the islands.
It seems that eternal and gloomy, some kind of mourning peace reigns in these harsh lands. But one, the smallest island - Deception - boldly violates the silent importance of the gloomy archipelago. Here, the elements of the fiery bowels of the Earth impudently burst into the realm of ice and frost, and travelers coming ashore from cruise ships can personally get acquainted with the southernmost (not counting the Antarctic volcano Erebus) hotbed of active volcanism on our planet. Deception Island itself is the remnant of a huge volcano, the cone of which, destroyed by the explosion, disappeared, and as a result, a giant depression-caldera of fifteen kilometers in diameter was formed. The uneven edges of the caldera protrude from the water for 200-500 meters, and in the middle, at the site of the crater, there is an almost round bay, sheltered from storms and connected to the ocean by a strait half a kilometer wide. From the plane, Deception resembles a large C written in black ink on the steel-gray surface of the ocean. An ideal natural harbor has long been chosen by whalers. They discovered the island in 1820 and used it as a base for repairing their ships and butchering whale carcasses for more than a hundred years. Only in 1931 did the last whaling schooner leave Port Forster (as the crater bay was called). But soon the time came for an active advance of world science on the unexplored ice continent, and in 1944 first an English scientific landing force landed on Deception, then, in 1948 and 1955, Argentinean and Chilean polar explorers. And they were attracted here not so much by a convenient bay as by a more serious reason: active volcanic activity on the island, which was observed by sailors who visited it earlier, starting in 1842. As already mentioned, all the South Shetland Islands are of volcanic origin. In particular, the islands of Penguin and Bridgeman, neighboring Deception Island, are also young volcanoes, but already extinct. However, the activity of Deception manifested itself in the first years of scientific observations only in the form of vapor-gas jets breaking through in some places - fumaroles. However, in November 1967, the island suddenly came to life. Its surface began to tremble noticeably from tremors, and scientists realized that an eruption was brewing. After a month of preparation, Pluto showed his character. On the northwestern shore of the bay, right next to the Chilean scientific station, the bowels opened up, and from the two craters formed here, ash and small volcanic lapilli bombs began to be ejected. Another crater appeared at the bottom of the bay, where a new island then arose. After a ten-minute "artificial preparation", the volcano seemed to have calmed down, but two hours later a second eruption followed. In clouds of swirling volcanic ash, lightning flashed ceaselessly. The clots of molten lava flying out of the fiery vents cooled in the air and flattened, taking the form of loaves of black bread with a cracked crust. They crashed into the ground with a roar, easily piercing through the walls and roofs of buildings. The Chileans hurriedly left the station and moved to the British base, located at a safe distance, and then all the scientists were evacuated by helicopter to the research ship Shackleton, which was stationed near the island. Ten days later, the crew of another scientific vessel in the bay discovered an island a kilometer long and four hundred meters wide that appeared from under the water. He rose sixty meters above the surface of the bay and was surrounded by a cloud of steam. The youngest island on Earth was called "New". True, three years later a new eruption turned it into a peninsula. When a year later, scientists again landed on Deception Island, they saw in its northern part six craters ranging in size from 25 to 220 meters in diameter. The layer of ash at the site of the burned-out Chilean base reached half a meter. Even at the opposite end of the island from the craters, volcanic bombs up to two meters in diameter were discovered. One can only guess what cataclysms raged on the island surrounded by ice in the dead polar night. February 1969 was marked by a new volcanic eruption. It began again with tremors lasting eight days, and then followed by ash and bombs, now forcing the British to leave their houses and seek shelter under the nearest rocks. At the same time, the polar explorers hurrying to the shelter had to dodge ten-centimeter hot lava cakes flying from above. Part of the glacier near the crater melted, and a powerful stream of water mixed with ash rushed to the bay, sweeping tractors and fuel tanks along the way. This time the British were helped by the Chileans, who took them on board their scientific vessel. After the eruption on the east side of Deception, a giant four-kilometer fault was formed, a hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep. He cut through the largest glacier on the island - Black Glacier. Clouds of smoke swirled above the fault from numerous fumaroles located at its bottom. In 1970, the third eruption was recorded. This time there was a grandiose explosion that changed the relief of the island and the outlines of Port Forster Bay. Part of one of the glaciers evaporated, and a rounded crater a hundred meters deep appeared in its place. Its diameter reached three hundred meters! Many valleys were covered with ash, and on the glaciers its layer reached two meters. Volcanic bombs up to two and a half meters in size were scattered all over the coast. In total, thirteen new craters were discovered on the island, and hot lakes with a diameter of 500-750 meters formed in some of them. The water in them had a poisonous greenish-yellow color, and its temperature reached 50-60 degrees. at least half of thousands of these birds died. In one place, scientists who examined the island a month after the disaster discovered a dying penguin, apparently scalded by a stream of boiling water from an underwater fumarole. The scale of the latest manifestation of the activity of the volcano is impressive. Ashes carried by the wind fell on all the islands of the archipelago. Some subglacial craters melted through the glaciers, and the ice evaporated. Six months after the eruption, the soil near the craters was so hot that it burned the legs even through the soles of boots. In the last thirty years, the volcanic island, having discharged the energy accumulated in the depths, seemed to have tamed its violent temper. Only smoking fumaroles and numerous hot springs remind of the catastrophic events that shook it in not so distant times. Now it is willingly visited by cruise ships, landing crowds of tourists in Port Forster Bay, attracted by the unusual shape of the island and its turbulent biography. willingly bathe in the hot lakes of Deception and in the natural baths on the beach, warmed by the hot breath of the bowels. Underwater fumaroles in the bay of the island are working properly, and flocks of Antarctic shrimp, which we usually call krill, often swim here, accidentally falling into jets of boiling water, are washed ashore by waves already boiled. Such is the unusual appearance of this distant island - islands of contrasts, islands of catastrophes, islands of glaciers and penguins, black rocks, volcanic bombs and hot lakes in menacing volcanic craters among the cold waters of the world's widest and southernmost Drake Passage. Author: B.Wagner
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