Tonga's eruption of the century

Voyage Number

IN2025_V05

Voyage Dates

10 Aug, 2025 to 01 Oct, 2025

Voyage Location

Hobart to Brisbane

Chief Scientist

Associate Professor Rebecca Carey

Institution

University of Tasmania

View the full voyage

Voyage summary

RV Investigator will undertake a 54-day research voyage to Tonga to study the aftermath of the 2022 eruption of Hunga Volcano, a submarine volcano located 65 km northwest of Tonga’s main island.

The 15 January 2022 eruption of Tonga’s Hunga Volcano was the most powerful volcanic eruption on the planet in the last 110 years. Its eruption column height of 58 km lacks modern precedent, as did its globe-crossing shockwave. An 850 m crater (depression) formed at the summit, a volcanogenic (originating from a volcano) tsunami crossed the Pacific Ocean, and the seafloor in the area was dramatically altered.

The voyage will be led by Chief Scientist Associate Professor Rebecca Carey from the University of Tasmania. Researchers will survey and map the volcano, which rises 2000 metres from the surrounding seafloor, and investigate the recovery of marine life and seafloor communities in the area following the 2022 eruption. More than 120 scientific operations are scheduled to be conducted in and around the volcano to collect data to better understand the eruption and post-eruption processes, and subsequent impacts on the marine biological communities. Scientific operations will include seafloor mapping, surveys of the sub-seafloor structure, sediment coring with giant piston corer (able to recover 24m cores), deep towed camera surveys and benthic sled sampling to survey marine life, and CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) instrument casts to study ocean properties.

Scientists will also be searching for volcanic plumes, a sign of volcanic activity beneath the seafloor.

The research will generate knowledge to help Pacific Island nations better manage risk from natural disasters to help protect fisheries and food security, prevent damage to critical sub-sea infrastructure such as communication cables, and safeguard island communities from volcano-generated tsunamis.

There is one other project on this voyage:

• Argo float deployment (Dr Gabriela Semolini Pilo, CSIRO): deployment of 7 standard and 1 biogeochemical (BGC) Argo float to support the International Argo Float Program.

The voyage has 40 science participants from 13 institutions, including research bodies from Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, along with 20 ship crew from Cyan Ship Management.

Voyage outcomes

Voyage outcomes will be published approximately 3-6 months after the completion of the voyage.