Huge Undersea Volcano Mapped Off Indonesia

A joint Indonesia-US exploration of the deep ocean north of Sulawesi have discovered a huge undersea volcano in the first week of its expedition, Indonesia's Antara news agency reported.

The NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer's built-in multibeam sonar mapped the towering undersea volcano while cameras on the ship's remotely-operated vehicle took high-definition images of the feature called Kawio Barat, an ocean area west of Kawio Islands, the US embassy said on its official website Wednesday.

Scientists chose Kawio Barat as the first target for the expedition based on satellite information and data collected by a joint Indonesian-Australian team in 2004.

"This is a huge undersea volcano, taller than all but three or four mountains in Indonesia, and rising more than ten thousand feet from the seafloor in water more than eighteen thousand feet deep," said Jim Holden, a US chief scientist for the first leg of the joint expedition.