
Scalloped hammerheads and silky sharks were swimming inside the Kavachi Volcano’s caldera off the Solomon Islands. Screenshot from NatGeo’s video, “Sharks Discovered Inside Underwater Volcano”.
The last few years it has been hard to miss the ‘so bad it’s good’ trilogy ‘Sharknado’; a waterspout that lifts sharks out the ocean, dumps them ashore in Los Angeles, and apocalyptic chaos ensues. What you may not have heard of is the recent discovery of a real ‘SharkCano’, 147 feet deep in an undersea volcano in the Solomon Islands.
The volcano, known as Kavachi, is highly volatile (acidic) and extremely active, thus very hard to study. At an opportune time to collect data between explosions, Brennan Phillips and his National Geographic crew sent a camera into the sunken caldera. What they found there was a complete surprise; two sharks–and a sixgill stingray–seemingly thriving in the plume and a hot acidic environment with carbon dioxide and methane bubbles rising from the seafloor vents. Not exactly hospitable elements for biology, as we know it.

Video shows the team watching the footage live with excitement seeing the sharks and stingray in their “cave-homey-thingy”.

Above: The NatGeo team marvels at the discovery. Screenshot from NatGeo’s video, “Sharks Discovered Inside Underwater Volcano”.
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