Four undersea volcanoes founded near Phuket

[dirtydog]

A team of Thai and German marine geologists has found four volcanoes under the sea about 200 kilometres away from Phuket, the team leader announced Monday.



Dr Anon Sanitwong na Ayutthaya of Chulalongkorn University, who headed the survey, said the survey was carried out for 15 days and ended on December 6 with support from the German government and from the National Marine Geology Institute in Keith.

The team survey the seabed for 1,500 square kilometres at the depth of 1,000 to 2,800 metres at the a continental rim about 3,00 kms away from Phuket.

He said the team detected four mud volcanoes in the area.

The first volcano is about 200 kms away from Phuket and its base is about 1-km long in diameter and is 100 metre high. It is located about 650 metres under the sea.

The second volcano is located 50 kms west of the first volcano and is about 1,000 metres under the sea. The third and fourth volcanoes are located about 60 kms northeast of the second volcano and are about 700 to 800 metres under the sea.

He said the survey was carried out in the aftermath of the tsunami which hit the Andaman Sea on December 26 2004.

Anon said the temperature of the water at the volcanoes was about 100 Celsius decrees while the temperature around it was only five degrees.

He said the public should not be panic about the four volcanoes as there are no indications so far that they would erupt.

He added that there were no apparent relations between the volcanoes and the 2004 tsunami.
He said the existence of the volcanoes should bode well for the country as they were signs of rare living creatures and there might be oil resources in the areas.
The Nation

[Begbie]

^He said the team detected four mud volcanoes in the area.

A mud volcano isn't a volcano in the normal sense so I think there's some confusion here or bullshit as later on they state that the water temperature at the volcano was 100 deg centigrade.

A mud volcano is where soft water saturated clay is pushed to the surface through overlying sediments. End of lesson, apologies.

[dirtydog]

Update: Mud volcanoes 'need research'

(dpa) - The discovery of potential mud volcanoes off the Thai island of Phuket by a team of Thai and German scientists has highlighted the need for more research on the Andaman Sea floor to prepare for future tsunamis, scientists said Tuesday.

Marine scientists from Thailand's Chulalongkorn University and Germany's University of Kiel completed the first seabed survey of a portion of the Andaman Sea trench on Dec 6 and data have revealed the existence of four underwater "hills with pretty odd shapes," said Chulalongkorn's Anond Sanitwong, the team leader.

"We believe that some of these hills could be mud volcanoes," Anond said.

Mud volcanoes belch mud and gases and, like their lava-spewing cousins, can trigger earthquakes.

Exploration of the Andaman Sea floor was prompted by the December 26, 2004, tsunami, which was triggered by an earthquake off Sumatra. The waves claimed more than 5,300 lives in the six Thai provinces rimming the Andaman, an area swarming with beach resorts that draw millions of tourists each year.

Earlier this year, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, or German Research Union, agreed to provide 165,000 euros ($217,700, 7.7 million baht) while the National Research Council of Thailand allocated 1.5 million baht ($41,700 dollars) to help finance the world's first survey of the trench in the Andaman Sea that has sparked concerns over underwater landslides and more tsunamis.

The survey found 100-metre-high, 800-metre-wide underwater hills 250 kilometres off Phuket, one of Thailand's most popular beach resorts.

Mud volcanoes are caused by heat from the sea floor, but it is too early to say whether these hills are a sign of seismic activity, Anond said.

The same underwater seismic faultline that caused the magnitude-9 quake that triggered the 2004 tsunami lies a few hundred kilometres to the west of where the potential mud volcanoes were discovered, the Thai scientist said.

"So tsunamis may not be of immediate concern at the moment, but we need to look into other aspects, such as the chance for a submarine landslide, which could also create a small tsunami," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"What we need at present is to get as much information as we can so we can evaluate the risk more precisely," said Anond, who added that he hoped the discovery would elicit more funding from the government for further research in the area.

Smith Dharmasaroja, head of Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre, said he would need to study the data on the seabed survey before commenting on their potential danger to Andaman Sea coast residents.

"A small earthquake could topple one [a mud volcano] and cause a small tsunami, but I don't want to make predictions yet," said Smith, the meteorologist who predicted the 2004 tsunami six years before it happened.
bangkok post

[dirtydog]

Mud volcanoes may just be underwater hills

The Mineral Resources Department yesterday downplayed an earlier announcement by a university lecturer that mud volcanoes had been found on the sea floor off Phuket.



Speaking at a press conference, the department's director general Apichai Chawacharoenpan said what had been discovered should be described as undersea hills - pending further surveys.

The conference was held in response to university lecturer Anond Snidvongs' announcement that a team of Thai and German marine geologists had found four "submarine mud volcanoes" about 200 kilometres from Phuket.

Anond, who was present at yesterday's press conference, also backed down from his "mud volcano" theory. "At this point, we should call it an undersea muddy hill," he said.

According to Anond, a mud volcano was not volcanic mud, yet this technical term led some people to wrongly believe that it was. The lecturer said the team that found the undersea "hills" was planning to survey the site again early next year.

"Available information is rather confusing, so we plan to gather information and seek clarification," he said. The team hoped to have an answer by March.

An expert, Worawuth Tantivanij, said that, based on available information, it was very unlikely that the targets of the ongoing surveys would be mud volcanoes. But it was interesting to find the "hills" on the seabed and survey results would be good to know.
"Even if the discovered formations are not mud volcanoes, the findings will be useful. We can use the information to assess, if any, economic impacts and risks," he said.
the nation