The tiny godwit stayed in the air for 11 days, breaking all previously known records of nonstop flight.
The most powerful volcanic eruption of the last century occurred in 2022 with the Hunga volcano, and new research reveals it caused massive changes to the Pacific Ocean floor, according to an international team of researchers.
In a recent paper published in Nature Geoscience, researchers revealed the extent of the underwater caldera collapse, in which material equal to 1,500 Great Pyramids was displaced, and a massive tsunami was created.
According to the team, studying this volcanic event yields important new information for monitoring such calamities and highlights what is to be gained by increased mapping efforts. Close monitoring is an essential element of tsunami early warning systems, where time is of the essence in saving lives.
Beginning December 20, 2021, and reaching its climax on January 15, 2022, the Hunga volcano eruption was a devastating underwater event. It occurred north of Tonga, an archipelago in the Pacific, and its effects spread as far as Chile, Peru, and Russia. The volcano is part of the Tonga–Kermadec Arc, a major submarine feature with 74 underwater volcanoes and 20 caldera complexes.
A caldera is a large depression that can form when magma is expelled from beneath a volcano and the overlying ground collapses. As a result of the eruption, the caldera deepened from roughly 150 meters below sea level to as much as 850 meters. The event displaced an enormous amount of volcanic material—8.9 cubic kilometers—and generated waves and underwater flows that destroyed crucial telecommunications cables and contributed to massive tsunamis. Fortunately, the eruption was far less deadly than an event like the 2011 Japanese tsunami. While millions of dollars in damage occurred, the global death toll remained at seven, despite fatalities occurring as far away as Peru.
While some of the displaced material resulted from erosion produced by the event, most of it was newly erupted magma. Still, only about 30% of the total magma involved was displaced, leaving a significant amount behind.
Historically, undersea volcanic calderas have been linked to some of Earth’s most catastrophic eruptions. Some 30,000 people died in 1883 when Indonesia’s Krakatau erupted, generating tsunamis and incredibly powerful ocean currents.
The Hunga caldera is extremely steep and formed during a rapid collapse, the speed and scale of which helped produce a tsunami even larger near the volcano than the one generated by Krakatau in the nineteenth century. Even about 100 kilometers from the volcano, waves reached heights of 40 meters.
Scientists often discuss how mysterious the seafloor remains, representing a largely unexplored frontier here on our own planet. Yet with Hunga, this was not the case, as the seafloor in the region had already been extensively mapped. Having such detailed maps from before an underwater volcanic eruption is extremely rare, making this a unique opportunity for scientists to study the impact of such an event.
By comparing these before-and-after datasets, the team can identify changes to the seafloor and better understand the threats such events pose to coastal communities and critical undersea infrastructure, including communications and energy links. By collecting repeated observations, scientists may eventually be able to develop better predictive models.
The researchers say this event illustrates the need for more extensive and repeated high-resolution seafloor mapping to better study these changes. They note that the southwest Pacific is particularly in need of improved mapping. By developing better mapping datasets, the team hopes to help mitigate the impacts of future—and potentially deadlier—events.
The paper, “Rapid Submarine Caldera Collapse During the 2022 Climactic Eruption of Hunga Volcano (Tonga),” appeared in Nature Geoscience on September 11, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
In French Polynesia, an adult seahorse floats in ocean waters alongside two juveniles. His head appears bowed, as the young fry look on curiously. The captivating black-and-white image (seen below) by photographer Julien Anton took top honors at the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards.
“Winning Ocean Photographer of the Year is an immense honour – one I’m proud to share with my family, and with the local residents, naturalists and fishermen of Tahiti and Moorea whose knowledge made this image possible,” Anton said in a statement. “We spent countless hours searching in difficult conditions, with no guarantee of finding a single seahorse. That is what made the moment so extraordinary – when the juveniles turned back towards the adult, it felt like something far beyond what I had dared to hope for. I am not a professional photographer; for me, photography is simply how I share what I see and feel. My hope is that this image can serve as a bridge between science, conservation and a world that deserves to know what is at stake.”
The 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition celebrates Big Blue’s incredible beauty while also highlighting the urgent need to protect it in a rapidly changing world. The annual contest is co-presented by Oceanographic Magazine and Blancpain.
The post 16 splashy and spectacular images from the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards appeared first on Popular Science.
Many organisms often set up their homes on sea turtles. Known as epibionts, the most noticeable passengers are usually the algae and barnacles clinging to the marine reptile’s protective shell. Other epibionts include tiny crabs in the Planes genus who frequently hitch rides inside the crevices between a turtle’s shell and body.
Biologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History recently confirmed a surprising addition to crustaceans’ roster of ocean taxis, however. After examining dozens of specimens collected during surveys off Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, researchers now know that some small crabs will occasionally climb aboard sea snakes. But these aren’t the Planes crabs the biologists expected. As they describe in a study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the clawed invertebrates instead belong to three species related to Planes within the same family.
University of Florida (UF) marine herpetologist Joseph Pfaller first noticed one of the suspicious crabs back in 2012 while studying the yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus). More specifically, he was examining the reptiles’ old skin. Sea snakes shed their scales just like their land-based cousins, but they accomplish the task much differently. Without any hard surfaces to slide against, sea snakes coil into loops to generate enough friction to remove the outer epidermal layers.
“When you find a sea snake’s skin, it’s usually in a knot,” Pfaller explained in a UF profile.
After only collecting a couple of snakes, Pfaller soon watched a small crab fall off one of them. He knew the ocean serpents sometimes hosted barnacles or other stationary organisms, but couldn’t recall a similar situation involving crustaceans—so he started paying attention.
Pfaller amassed 371 sea snakes by the end of his expedition, and he identified far more than crabs. Some of the reptiles also hosted shrimps, snails, and even a clingfish. Pfaller and his colleagues assumed no one previously noticed the additions because marine biologists are generally more focused on the yellow-bellied sea snakes themselves due to their colorful appearance, uncommon distribution, and fascinating underwater behaviors.
Technically speaking, most of the crabs weren’t actually crabs just yet. Instead, most of Pfaller’s collection were considered to be in megalopae—a phase between larva and adult life. That said, at least one young crab appeared to belong to the Planes genus.
Although Pfaller stored the preserved specimens at Florida Museum of Natural History, he soon transitioned to focusing on sea turtles instead of snakes. It took a decade before the oddities resurfaced. After casually mentioning the collection to University of Guam crustacean expert Robert Lasley, his colleague couldn’t resist the joke:
“‘Wait! Wait! Wait! Are you saying you have planes on a snake?’” remembered Pfaller, referencing the cult horror movie Snakes on a Plane.
The pair decided to follow up on his specimens by sequencing their DNA, assuming to confirm their Planes suspicions,but results collected by study co-author and UF invertebrate researcher Soma Elefánti weren’t what they expected.
“Honestly, the thought that we could name this study ‘Planes on a Snake’ was enough to get me motivated, but when we got the results, it was evident that something weird and interesting was going on here,” Lasley said.
As it turned out, none of the megalopae were in the Planes genus. Instead, they belonged to other species in the Grapsidae family, whose adult crabs live on Costa Rica’s coastal trees and rocky shorelines. The study authors knew most crabs release larvae into the water, regardless of living on land or in the water when adults. Because of this, they theorized that the larvae that survived long enough to transition into megalopae instinctually started scoping out a more solid habitat.
“They can swim well, but these things are also built to climb or settle onto something,” Lasley said.
The megalopae that eventually ended up on coastal drift lines likely encountered sea snakes, latched on, then were swept back out into the ocean.
“The snakes are just there, and the crabs don’t know the difference,” explained Pfaller.
The reason no adult Planes crabs were found on the snakes can also be explained by their family tree—Planes crustaceans evolved to know better than to try making a home on the reptiles. Meanwhile, these other species in the Graspidae family are still learning. But since these floaters would never make it back to shore, evolution would have likely taught them the hard way.
“It’s not a good idea. These crabs [had] made a poor decision,” said Lasley.
The post Tiny crabs discovered hitching rides on sea snakes appeared first on Popular Science.
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