Chance snap reveals eruption
A tale of co-incidental discovery
JILL CLEAVE
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VOLCANIC PUMICE: The raft of ash and pumice spotted by Maggie de Grauw on a flight home from Samoa in July 2012.
A Waikato woman who snapped a chance picture of debris from an undersea volcano as she flew home from a Samoan holiday alerted scientists around the world to a major new discovery.
But the tale of co-incidental discovery doesn't end there with her then finding debris from the same eruption on a Coromnadel beach months later.
Tirohia artist and jewellery maker Maggie de Grauw was flying home from a holiday in Samoa in July last year when she spotted a vast brownish-grey slick on the surface of the ocean beneath the aircraft 800km northeast of Tauranga which turned out to be from an undersea volcanic eruption.
''I took a couple of pictures [from the aeroplane] wondering if it was an algal bloom, oil spill or, recalling a conversation with a friend the week before - a deposit from a volcano, '' she said.
On her return to New Zealand an internet search back home lead her to Scott Bryan, a vulcanologist at the Queensland University.
She sent her photographs to him and he alerted geologists in New Zealand and the United States.
Nine days later the crew of a Royal New Zealand Air force Orion found the deposit over an area 250 nautical miles by 30 nautical miles. The HMNZS Canterbury was then diverted to the area where a NIWA marine biologist identified the sediment as likely to be a mix of ash and pumice from and underwater volcanic eruption.
Ms de Grauw said Robert Andrews of the Smithsonian Institute emailed her to tell her if she had not photographed the raft no- one would have known there had been an eruption on the Havre seamount on the Kermadec Ridge, as it had no history of erupting.
''He said it had taken a lot of careful international collaboration to analyse satellite thermal and visual images and lots of other scientific things and a research cruise to the submarine volcano Havre to confirm the source of the pumice, '' she said.
The photographs Ms de Grauw took were used in a report on the eruption by the Smithsonian Institute ntebut the story doesn't end there.
''This January, six months to the day after photographing the pumice raft, I was beachcombing at Opoutere and Hot Water Beach and found some chunks of pumice covered with 'goose barnacles' which rarely make it to our shores so I let NIWA know and they asked me to send samples down, '' she said.
''It has just been confirmed the pumice I found on the beach came from that undersea eruption of Havre so I am thrilled with the amazing coincidence, '' she said.
Ms de Grauw has previously used pumice beads in her jewellery work for years but had some new material with special significance.
''Now I have confirmation from NIWA about the pumice being from the raft I saw, I am going to make a series of pieces using this freshly spewed out pumice to commemorate my accidental journey into a scientific discovery, '' she said.
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