White Island

White Island is the name of an active volcano located in the Bay of Plenty, about 50km off shore from the town of Whakatane. White Island was given its name by Captain Cook who was the first European to see the see the island. In his logbook, it is noted that “We called it White for as such it always appeared to us.”

The island was formed about 200,000 years ago by the motion between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Pacific Plate which resulted in superheated rock being driven up through the ocean floor. The island is only about 324 hectares in size with three cones currently visible. The active cone is located in the center of the island while the older ones have been worn down by erosion over time. The volcano continues to be active and between 1976 and 1981 two new craters were formed and 100,000 cubic meters of rock was ejected.

Reverend Henry Williams was the first European to arrive in 1826. He described lakes of boiling substances and bodies of smoke with the stench of brimstone. However, the Maori made use of the island long before the Europeans did, catching sea birds on the island and using sulfur collected on the island as a fertilizer for their gardens. The Maori used the steam vents on the island to cook the birds to eat while they worked. Ownership of the island was claimed by both the Maori and the Crown, but it was a Danish sea captain who somehow gained ownership. The ownership of the island then changed hands several times until the New Zealand Manure & Chemical Company (an advertising company worked long and hard on that name) took control of the island with the intention of producing both fertilizer and sulfur ore. However production was abandoned after Mt Tarawera in Rotorua erupted and it was feared that White Island would erupt as well. Production resumed in 1898 but after the fourth year, the production had decreased so much that the enterprise was abandoned.

Ownership of the island again changed hands, but the island was left alone until another attempt to mine sulfur was made in 1913. The workers lived on the island and slept at night in a camp on one of the beaches. However, a massive lahar occurred in 1914, wiping out all of the buildings on the island as well as the men who were working and living there. (A lahar is a mudflow composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano. Lahars are powerful forces capable of moving great quantities of debris - house-size boulders, trees, etc. for long distances in a short amount of time. They look and behave like flowing concrete and destroy or incorporate virtually everything in their path. Lahars can be extremely dangerous, because of their energy and speed. Large lahars can flow several dozen meters per second and can flow for many kilometers, causing catastrophic destruction in their path. One such lahar happened just recently on Mt Ruapehu on 19 March, 2007.) No one knew that the lahar on White Island had occurred until a local arrived on the island to sell food to the workers. While walking through the crater, he realized that everything looked different and that all of the men had disappeared without a trace.

Production was stalled for a time, but was resumed once more in 1923 by a new venture that was fairly successful. Production continued for ten years until the company went bankrupt in 1933. A local family then acquired the island and this same family still owns the island today. The New Zealand government tried to buy the island in 1952, but the Buttle family was unwilling to sell (which turned out to be a very good financial decision). Instead a compromise was reached and the island was declared a private scenic reserve. Today, access to the island is restricted to those using one of four tour operators. Everyone who sets foot on the island must pay a fee to the Buttle’s which is included in the cost of the cost of the tour.

The primary means of gaining access to the island is to book a tour through White Island Tours which sails people out to the island on one of two boats. The cost of the tour includes the boat ride, the tour guides as well as tea and lunch. The whole tour is really well done and everyone was quite pleased with it. The full cost of the tour is refunded if the boat is unable to land on the island due to rough seas. However if the volcano erupts prior to landing on the island, making a landing too dangerous, no refund is given.

When Sue and I had called to make a booking on the boat, we had been worried about getting a spot, but luckily there were spaces. We left Rotorua at about 6:30 AM and were in the town of Whakatane on the coast by 8 for the 8:15 launch. There are two sailings each day, but we had booked the earlier one because it was supposed to have calmer seas and I was glad that we did. We had a smaller boat than the later tour, but for most of our tour we were the only ones on the island which was great for photos. Plus it started raining at the end of our tour so it was nice to be leaving when that started. Our fellow passengers were mostly from Europe and we were approximately 20 people not including the crew.

During the 80 minute trip to the island, a pod of dolphins was spotted and our boat stopped so that we could see them. There were about twelve dolphins in the pod including a baby. The dolphins made pass after pass by our boat, jumping out of the water and frolicking around us. It looked like they wanted to play all day, but we had a volcano to visit and so we resumed our voyage.

During our trip, I spoke with our tour leader who told me that he could see the island on the horizon. However, all that I could see was haze. As we began to near the island it became apparent that the island had been shrouded in steam from the crater. Our boat neared the island and worked its way around to the harbor used by the sulfur mining companies. The small harbor was formed where the rim of one of the craters had collapsed, creating a hole in the steep walls of rock to allow passage to the interior of the carter. The ocean water in the harbor had a yellowish hue to it, due to the sulfur spread all over the sea floor. Beyond the crater wall, we could see the remains of a concrete building and steel gears and equipment strewn about.

Each of the passengers was issued a hard hat and a gas mask. We had to wear the hard hat at all times on the island and we were instructed to use the gas mask if we had a difficult time breathing on the island or if we were caught in fumes from one of the vents due to a wind change. Gasses typically released by volcanic systems include water vapor (H20), followed by carbon dioxide (C02) and sulfur dioxide (S02). Volcanoes also release smaller amounts of others gases, including hydrogen sulfide (H2S), hydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen chloride (HCL), hydrogen fluoride (HF), and helium (He). Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a colorless gas with a pungent odor that irritates skin and the tissues and mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat. Sulfur dioxide chiefly affects upper respiratory tract and bronchi. The World Health Organization recommends a concentration of no greater than 0.5 ppm over 24 hours for maximum exposure. A concentration of 6-12 ppm can cause immediate irritation of the nose and throat; 20 ppm can cause eye irritation; 10,000 ppm will irritate moist skin within minutes. I can write from experience that exposure to the SO2 gives you a tingling feeling at the back of the throat and you feel like your windpipe is constricting. To counter this, in addition to the gas masks we were given hard candies to suck on. We the passengers had our gas masks and small exposures to the poisonous and corrosive gasses wouldn’t have a long term effect on our health. But, what about the guides who couldn’t wear the masks and talk at the same time and who were exposed to the gasses every day?

Because our boat could not approach the rocky shore, we were given life jackets and took turns being ferried by rubber boat to an old, concrete dock. Once we were on the island we could peer into what lay inside of the crater walls. Beyond the remains of the sulfur mining operation, we could see the high walls of one of the older craters which formed most of the island. The rock walls were stained white, yellow, red and orange. Within the crater, we could see heaps of rock and stone with steam and mists rising beyond from multiple vents and the crater. The guide pointed out cameras located up on the lip of the crater which are used by scientists to monitor the volcanic activity. However, there was likely to be little to no warning if an eruption were about to begin.

Since there was no way of knowing when an eruption would occur, we were instructed by the guides as to what we should do if an eruption started during the tour. We were told that when the volcano had erupted in the past, it wasn’t lava that had come out of the crater but pyroclastic bombs. The bombs could be as large as a car and in the past they had been sent hundreds of feet into the air. If this were to occur, we were to run behind one of the piles of rock to wait until we were told it was safe to move. In the meanwhile, the crew of the boat would be frantically moving the boat away from the island to prevent it from being sunk by the bombs, leaving us with no way off of the island. Once the bombs stopped flying, they would try to maneuver back to the island to get us. In the case where the water in the crater suddenly rose, we would be faced with a lahar of boiling acid coming at us. I actually don’t remember what we were to do in that case, but I cant think of too many options. The guide had told me that there had been tremors on the island only a few days ago that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, but these had been determined to be seismic in nature, not volcanic. But basically, we were taking a risk walking about in the crater of an active and unpredictable volcano.

We began our walk into the crater and we were instructed to follow the guides along the trails. Periodically, the ground was marked by white, crystal covered mounds that rose from the ground like bubbles in the crust of a pizza. The mounds were about a meter or larger in diameter and up to 1/2 meter high. There were also flat areas that showed the same white coloration and crystals. We were warned to avoid stepping on these areas because they were formed when a vent under the ground heated water in the soil, creating gas that was causing the bubble and the crystals. The mounds were brittle and we were warned that if we stepped on the mounds, the ground would easily give way under our weight and we would plunge into boiling mud.

The walls of the crater were amazing. There were reds and yellows and browns and the walls were scarred as if a child had run its fingers down the walls. Here and there were areas where holes where steam and brimstone were escaping, leaving bright yellow rings around the holes. The ground over which we walked was marked by areas where water was running or had run in streams. Some of these streams were bright yellow while others were bright red or pale blue.

As we walked deeper into the crater, winding our way around mounds of rock, flowing water and open vents, we approached a vent from which steam and gas were hissing out wildly, creating billowing clouds. While we were gathered around the vent, suddenly the wind changed direction and our group was enveloped in the suffocating cloud of gas. We all put on our gas masks and our guide led us away from the vent.

Our walk towards the back of the crater was taking us closer to the active crater. To look into the crater, we would have to walk up a wall of dirt which had formed around the crater above us. The guide stopped us to tell us that if we went up to the crater, all of the safety procedures went out the window. If there were to be an eruption while we were up there, we would only have seconds before we would be engulfed in a spray of boiling acid and showered with pyroclastic bombs. It was suggested that those who came with family should say their goodbyes before proceeding.

We climbed up to the lip of the crater and down below us was a pool of very pale, opaque blue liquid shrouded in mists. The mists were so thick that we couldn’t see the other side of the crater, but we could hear the violent hissing of the vents on the other side of the crater which were producing all of the gas. The color of the liquid was beautiful, but deadly. The guide told us that the PH of the liquid was measured and that at one point the value had been negative. The guide said that he didn’t know that the PH scale could go negative, but apparently super strong acids could do so. The smell of sulfur was strong in the air and my throat was itching from the gasses.

Needless to say, the volcano didn’t erupt while we were standing on the crater and after standing on the rim for a time, we climbed back down and began to walk towards the far end of the old crater. Along the way we could see an older crater that had been partially filled in by one of the eruptions. We were told about one of the sulfur mine workers who had gone missing one day. His shoes were found near one of the craters, but there was no sign of his body. The theory was that he had committed suicide. However, the guides told us that a while ago, one of the guides had been on the island and had fallen into one of the holes in the ground. Unable to get himself out, he took of his shoes and threw out of the hole so that others would see the shoes and know where he lay. He eventually managed to get himself out of the hole, but our guides theorized that maybe that was what happened to the sulfur mine worker.

We passed more areas of brilliant reds and yellows and more of the tiny vents in the ground. These were really remarkable because you would see a brilliant ring of yellow granules scattered around a little black hole in the ground. The whole thing looked extremely delicate and was probably very dangerous. We saw many puddles of gurgling mud.

Our walk took us back to the site of the sulfur mine and we could wander past rusted gears, the remains of a tractor and the dilapidated concrete walls. We wandered down to the dock where the rocks on the shore were a dark red color that offset the bright yellow water of the ocean. We were instructed to scrub our shoes to get off any of the corrosive substances from them we were taken back to the boat in turns. We were given the chance to swim in the bay and one brave woman took them up on the offer, swimming off of an active volcano. The boat had intended to circle the island before heading back to shore, but strong winds on the other side of the island resulted in choppy water and so they turned back.

Like a lot of things in New Zealand, the trip to White Island was pricey, but definitely worth it. Never have I seen anything like the inside of the crater and it was very exciting to walk on an active volcano.


Check out this link to the webcams in several of New Zealand’s volcanoes

More about the recent lahar on Mt Ruapehu can be found here.

A lot of the information about White Island for this email was found on the Pee Jay website

Additional references about lahars and volcanic gasses:
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado

Volcano Hazards Program (VHP) of the U.S. Geological Survey