Part 9/15:
In 2022, the coastline of Macauley Island silently rose four meters since 2015, with fossilized shells and coral skeletons serving as silent witnesses to ongoing instability. The rare silence that followed in March 2024—when the islands’ volcanoes ceased emitting gases for 72 hours—was broken when an undersea eruption created a new seamount, Te Kā (“the burner”). This event proved the unpredictable nature of volcano activity, with even periods of dormancy leading to abrupt and explosive eruptions.