The Underwater Geology Of The Hawaii Islands Is Just Astonishing

The Pacific Plate is moving northwestward at a significant rate – several centimeters per year. This constant plate movement over a local volcanic “hot spot,” or plume, has produced a chain of volcanic islands, one after another in assembly-line fashion. They go (really) by the name Hawaii.

The youngest island in this chain, Hawaii, emerged over a million years ago as five separate volcanoes on the seafloor. By erupting again and again, over time the five volcanoes created thin layers of lava spread upon older layers, continuing to build up until the volcanic heads emerged from the sea – to form today's Hawaii. But how can five volcanoes create one island? Well, they probably erupted at different times, creating flows that overlapped the other mountain's flows, with the five peaks eventually becoming the single island we see today.