volcanoes

That's No Bomb -- It's an Underwater Volcano (PHOTOS)

Sean Breslin Published: Mar 28, 2013, 8:04 AM EDT weather.com

An undersea volcano is seen erupting off the coast of Tonga, sending plumes of steam, ash and smoke hundreds of feet into the air on March 18, 2009. (Dana Stephenson/Getty Images)

Deep under the Pacific Ocean and along the Ring of Fire sits a volcano that suddenly came to life in March 2009.
The eruption captured by the images above occurred just miles off the coast of Tonga, a chain of islands north of New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean. They sit on a fault line that is extremely active, and when a 4.4-magnitude earthquake shook the islands in 2009, residents thought nothing of it.