Qualla: Whakaari / White Island

Whakaari / White Island: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Avenue, CC BY-SA 3.0. Only a camp cat survived. In September 1914, part of the western crater rim of Whakaari collapsed, sending a lahar through the sulphur mining operation that clung to the island's interior. All ten workers vanished without a trace. Days later, a resupply ship found a single cat picking its way through the wreckage -- dubbed "Peter the Great" by the sailors who rescued it. A century later, the volcano would kill again, this time taking twenty-two lives from a group of tourists who had come to walk across what the Maori named te puia whakaari -- "The Dramatic Volcano." The name has never been wrong.

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Image: Avenue | CC BY-SA 3.0

Whakaari / White Island: Fire Sent from the Ancestors

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.5. Maori mythology weaves Whakaari into the story of Ngatoro-i-rangi's ascent of Tongariro. Freezing on the mountain, he called to his ancestors for warmth, and they kindled fire on Whakaari and sent it to him -- a story that traces a line of volcanic activity from the Bay of Plenty...

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Image: CC BY 2.5

Whakaari / White Island: Two Cones and a Broken Wall

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit XPinger (Chris Sutton) from Rotorua, New Zealand, CC BY-SA 2.0. Whakaari is an andesite-dacite stratovolcano built from two overlapping cones. The older Ngatoro Cone is extinct and partially eroded. The Central Cone remains very much active, its amphitheatre-shaped crater open to the southeast where past landslides and eruptions have torn awa...

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Image: XPinger (Chris Sutton) from Rotorua, New Zealand | CC BY-SA 2.0

Whakaari / White Island: Mining on a Live Volcano

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. After the 1914 disaster, mining resumed in 1923 -- but the miners had learned caution. They built their huts on a flat area near a gannet colony, away from the crater. Each morning they lowered a boat from a gantry, rowed around to the factory wharf in Crater Bay, and worked unti...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Whakaari / White Island: December 9, 2019

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GNS Science (formerly Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd.), CC BY 3.0 nz. At 14:11 on 9 December 2019, Whakaari erupted while forty-seven people stood on its crater floor. The eruption was phreatic -- a sudden release of superheated steam and volcanic gases that launched rock and ash into the air without warning. Twenty-two people died, including two w...

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Image: GNS Science (formerly Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd.) | CC BY 3.0 nz

Whakaari / White Island: A Gannet Colony on a Volcano

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit QFSE Media, CC BY-SA 3.0 nz. Despite everything -- the eruptions, the toxic gases, the acid-altered rock -- Whakaari hosts one of New Zealand's main breeding colonies of Australasian gannets. Thousands arrive each year to mate and raise chicks on an island where little vegetation grows and the ground itself ...

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Image: QFSE Media | CC BY-SA 3.0 nz