Hey, kids, cramming for your Geography final? Don't forget Snoopy Island!

Twittter user @tekken8810

@etienneeshrdlu: "Exactly as Nostradamus predicted. A new Snoopy-shaped island rises from the sea near Tokyo"

"Hiroshi Ito, a volcanologist with the Japanese coastguard, said the island could erode after the eruptions cease. 'But it could also remain permanently,' he told the FNN news network."

-- from "Japanese 'Snoopy' island created by
volcanic eruption," in The Guardian

by Ken

Boy, you can bet the creationists will have a field day with this one. As our pal Mai Armstrong, the indefatigable blogger of the (NY-NJ) Working Harbor Coalition, writes:

An undersea volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan sprouted a brand new island from the waters around the Ogasawara island chain in recent weeks.

Active lava flow has grown the new island quite rapidly. Expanding to merge with neighboring Nishinoshima island, a new landmass has emerged with a familiar silhouette.

It’s Snoopy!

Hey, kids, don't try this at home!

Through the miracle of time-lapse photography . . .

From TV pulpits all across the land we can expect to hear of this miracle wrought by that indefatigable prankster God, creating an island in the shape of (I'm guessing) his favorite cartoon character.

According to Wikipedia, the Nishinoshima we know, or knew, was itself largely the creation of volcanic eruptions in 1973-74, which significantly expanded "a small, green island which had no eruptions in the past 10,000 years." The latest round of island-building began in November, producing a small new island. By Christmas Eve, The Guardian's Justin McCurry reports from Osaka:

A massive undersea volcanic eruption had resulted in the new island linking with Nishinoshima at its two southern corners. In between sits of a pool of reddish seawater -- Snoopy's perfectly positioned collar.

Experts said that volcano remains highly active, as red magma continued to rise, raising the possibility that it will lose its endearing shape as it expands.

News coverage, including aerial photographs, has created a worldwide network of fans of the new island.


Snoopy Island -- or "greater Nishinoshima Island," if you insist, now that the new island has merged with the old one to form our old friend Snoopy -- is in the Ogasawara (aka Bonin) volcanic-island chain, some 620 miles south of Tokyo.

The Guardian's Justin McCurry reports further:

Some speculated how long it would be before China claimed sovereignty over the island – a reference to a longstanding dispute over ownership of the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.

Though meant as a joke, the comments did not entirely miss the mark: Japan plans to build port facilities and transplant fast-growing coral fragments onto Okinotorishima, a pair of tropical islets located even farther south of Tokyo in a resource-rich area of ocean coveted by China.

And Japan's chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, welcomed the prospect that Japan's borders could stretch, if only by a few hundred metres. "If it becomes an island, our country's territorial waters will expand," he told reporters after the island was discovered last month.

"No doubt aware of the media buzz surrounding Snoopy island," McCurry writes, "Japan's coastguard warned that the area was still very dangerous and told would-be tourists to stay away." This warning was presumably what tweeter @astralpouch had in mind in this tweet:

"Holy crap . . . Snoopy island . . . I don't care what they say I'm going over there."

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