Stepping onto Tonga’s newest island

THE first three visitors ever have stepped foot onto the world’s newest island capturing incredible photos, but some say it’s too dangerous to visit.

THE first three visitors have stepped foot on Tonga’s newest island that formed earlier this year from underwater volcanic eruptions.

Sitting about 65km southwest of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, the new island is more than 1km wide, 2km long and about 100m high. It began to form when the underwater volcano, Hunga Tonga, erupted last December, spewing out huge volumes of rock and dense ash. It had been five years since the last eruption. On the weekend, Tonga resident and hotel owner, GP Orbassano, visited the new island with a friend and his son and climbed to the tip of the island’s crater, around 250 metres high. “It’s really quite solid once you are on it and it’s quite high,” Orbassano told the BBC. It felt quite safe — the only difficult thing was getting out of the boat on to the island. The surface was hot, you could feel it. And climbing it was hard in the bright sun.” Orbassano, 63, said the volcano is now filled with water and smells like sulphur. Scientists say that the new island is highly unstable and vulnerable to waves and currents and too dangerous to visit. But the world’s newest island may not be around for long, it is thought that the island will erode back into the ocean in a few months.