Sathish Photography

Monday, April 9, 2012

Hawaii - Its Wonder and Formation

The fresh, floral air energizes you. The warm, tranquil waters refresh you. The breathtaking, natural beauty renews you. Be it the Napali Coast of Kauai, Volcanoes of Big Island, Beaches of Maui or the Pearl Harbor of Oahu, hawaii has something for everyone. And if you think going to One island completes your Hawaii trip you are heavily mistaken.

There is a lot to talk about Hawaii. A simple search on Google would give you tons of information about Hawaii. Some good sites are Frommer and the great Virtual Tourist. They have extensive information about what can be found in Hawaii and what to do in Hawaii. Here in this blog, I will cover more about the formation of Hawaii and the interesting facts behind it. This was something I recently stumbled upon and felt like sharing it.

Hawaii - how did it form:


Hot spot underneath Big Island
All the Hawaiian islands were formed from volcanic activity initiated at an undersea magma source called a hotspot. The Volcanoes of Hawaii is actually formed from this hot spot. And every Island has atleast one volcano in it. Big Island has the most number of volcanoes in it i.e. 5. And it has the only Active Volcano ( Kilauea, active from 1983). If you see the images, you will see how the Islands are formed and about the volcanic connection between the islands.


And this information you can find easily in many places in the Web and in hawaii itself. Most of them know the chain of Islands between Kauai and Big Island constitute the Hawaiian Islands. But thats not the end of the chain and the chain of Hawaiian Islands go until Russia. Surprised!!!! Hard to believe?? I will help you find it out yourself. Open Google Maps and search for Hawaii. Now change from Map View to Earth View.  Now zoom out until you see the tip of Russia on the left. You will be able to see a L shaped line of islands originating from Big Island which runs until Russia. These are nothing but Hawaiian Islands submerged under the sea. This is something thats unique to Hawaii. You now know the hotspot that is forming Hawaiian islands. You also would have heard about the Continental Drift that is happening for millions of years and is still happening. The hotspot has always remained in the same place but continents keep moving like a conveyor belt on a machine. The hotspot keeps pushing the land up and up that comes on top of it. The continental drift happens really slowly that the hotspot is able to build big volcanoes on the same place. As the continents kept moving away from the hotspot, they cooled down and got submerged again. Currently the hotspot is below Big Island, the youngest of all these Islands. And thats why it has an active volcano. And in another 10,000 years, there may be one more island on the right of Big Island and the beautiful Kauai could get submerged. No one knows. 

1 comment:

  1. Wow.... Thats a very interesting piece of information!

    ReplyDelete