Vanuatu volcano throws up huge fumes of ash into Pacific's 'Ring of Fire'

Vanuatu islands, located between Australia and Fiji, witnessed eruption of an active underwater volcano on Wednesday, with visuals on social media showing huge fumes of ash going up in the oceanic skyline.

Philip Malsale, identified as a Vanuatu-based climatologist, shared images on Twitter that showed massive plumes of ash going into the sky. Reports in the local media claimed that the volcano is six kilometres east of Epi island, about 68km north of the capital Port Vila.

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The East Epi submarine volcano was reportedly steaming since early on Wednesday morning.

"The volcano activity increased a little bit to explosions that propelled ash to some 100 kilometres that fall around the submarine volcano," Ricordo William, a submarine senior volcano officer in Vanuatu said in an official statement.

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"We gave advice to the aviation industry as well as the marinas to stay away from the east of Apia island region," he added.

Locals on the nearby islands of Epi and Tongoa have been told to avoid the coast.

Volcanoes in Vanuatu

The nation made up of roughly 80 islands that stretch 1300 kilometres has a number of active volcanoes. Vanuatu is in the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide. They have shown activity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century.

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The current eruption is in one of the series of active underwater volcanic cones which last erupted in 2004.

Earlier in January, a strong 7.0-magnitude earthquake had hit Vanuatu, with people moving to higher grounds for the fear of a Tsunami tidal wave. A tsunami warning was initially issued for Vanuatu, New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands but cancelled about an hour and a half after the quake.

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