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Right now were diving in the crater of Vailulu'u 
Volcano and we're on a structure in the middle

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of the crater that has appeared in the last 
eighteen years.

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This structure wasn't here, it's a cone that's
more than a thousand feet tall above the crater

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floor.

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The hotspots volcanoes are a plume of hot
rock basically in the material of the earth

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rising up all the way to the oceanic crust
that are far from the boundaries of the tectonic

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plates.

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And as tectonic plates move over these plume
you will serve a formation of chains of volcanoes

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all in a line and Samoa is an example of this
process.

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The first stage in ocean exploration is to
make a map and for many areas of the world

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that we work, there simply are no high resolution
maps.

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So very often the mapping team will go first
to an area generate high quality, high resolution

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maps of the seafloor.

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And from there we pick our ROV dive targets.

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One of the reasons that we are interested
in diving this place is that we have detected

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a growth of the central cone which may be
cause by recent eruptions in the last few

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years.

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So this is an active volcano and is a dynamic
system and we see continuous changes.

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When we went over the top of Vailulu'u over
last week and a half and mapped it again,

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it became very clear that the cone approximately
doubled in volume since two thousand five.

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During the dive we were able to move from
the older portion of the column to the two

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new columns and it was really clear that the
two new columns looked younger.

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And in terms of just being fresher that hadn't
been exposed to the sea water as long.

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They also look younger because they didn't
have as well developed biological communities.

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So its really interesting that for an experiment
those early colonizers of course there are

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some species that come late and this is process
that we know that is happening in ecosystems

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on land that is much better understood.

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But this process of succession and recolonization
of areas is poorly understood in deep sea

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environments after an eruption.

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I think the most exciting event as a geologist
the most exciting aspect of all this is to

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really see to be witness to how biology takes
a foothold on new seafloor.

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The newest seafloor thats formed.

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Currently Vailulu'u's crater is about half
a mile deep.

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So the question is when is Vailulu'u going
to make it to the surface?

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That's a really tough question.

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Volcanoes are difficult to predict.

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If the volcano continues to show its present
rate of growth.

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It could potentially summit on the order of
thousands of years.