Volcanic Alert Level remains at 2
Aviation Colour Code remains at Orange

Quote:

http://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/alert-b....
Aug 9 2012

A visit was made to White Island this morning and observations confirm the volcano is in eruption. This is the first ash emission from White Island since February 2001 and represents the start of a new phase of volcanic activity at White Island.

A vent has been established towards the south-west corner of 1978/90 Crater Complex and is now erupting an ash charged plume. The ash is only rising 2-300 m above the active vent, ie. a weak eruption. The ash is black and is depositing on the wall of the Main Crater to the west of the vent (light easterly wind). The ash from the past 2 days has washed away from the factory area. The active vent has started to build a tuff cone and there are impact craters around it created by ejecta from explosions. There was no sign of impact craters or blocks outside of the 1978/90 Crater area.

The Factory and Rim web cameras were cleaned.

Visitors to White Island are now at the highest level of risk since the end of the 2001 eruptions. Additional hazards to visitors to the island now include the health effects of volcanic ash and acid gas exposure, including respiratory issues, skin and eye sensitivity to acid gases. Explosive eruptions can occur at any time with little or no warning. We advise a high level of caution should be taken, if visiting the island.

We continue to monitor the volcano and will issue further updates as more information becomes available.

White Island is an amazing place to visit for a few hours when it's relatively quiet.

Crater lake is total HCI and sulphur was mined here from the 1840s to the 1930's.

It really is a strange, desolate place.

"Attempts were made in the mid 1880s, 1898–1901 and 1913-1914 to mine sulphur from White Island but the last of these came to a halt in September 1914, when part of the western crater rim collapsed, creating a lahar which killed all 10 workers.[1] They disappeared without trace, and only a camp cat survived. He was found some days afterwards by the resupply ship, and dubbed "Peter the Great".[2][3] Some years later in 1923 mining was again attempted, but learning from the 1914 disaster, the miners built their huts on a flat part of the island near a gannet colony. Each day they would lower their boat into the sea from a gantry, and row around to the mining factory wharf in Crater Bay. If the sea was rough they had to clamber around the rocks on a very narrow track on the crater’s edge. Before the days of antibiotics, sulphur was used in medicines as an antibacterial agent, in the making of match heads, and for sterilising wine corks. The miner’s diggings were handled in small rail trucks to the crushing and bagging process in the factory built on the island. Unfortunately, there was not enough sulphur at Whakaari and so the ground up rock was used as a component of agricultural fertiliser. Eventually the mining ended in the 1930s because of the poor mineral content in the fertiliser. The remains of the buildings can still be seen, much corroded by the sulphuric gases."