A naval officer calls this "the weirdest thing I've seen in 18 years at sea"

The Royal New Zealand Navy has discovered 7500 square miles of the lightweight stone pumice floating in the South Pacific. New Zealand's Scoop reports that Royal Australian Navy Lieutenant Tim Oscar called it "the weirdest thing I've seen in 18 years at sea." Oscar went on to tell Scoop:


It turns out, after examination over the weekend, that the pumice covers 7500 square miles. This stone is so lightweight that it can float on water.

Here is a brief shot of the pumice from a plane. It's likely the rocks are the result of an underwater volcano; when lava cools rapidly, it turns to pumice. So it's possible that an enormous volcano has been going off, and our only hint of it was this huge field of pumice. Local scientists say there is an active underwater volcano, Monowai, which might be the source of the extraordinary phenomenon.