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Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki Unleashes Towering Columns of Hot Clouds

Residents watch as Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano spews volcanic materials during an eruption in East Flores, Indonesia Saturday, Nov, 9, 2024. (AP Photo)
Residents watch as Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano spews volcanic materials during an eruption in East Flores, Indonesia Saturday, Nov, 9, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki Unleashes Towering Columns of Hot Clouds

Residents watch as Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano spews volcanic materials during an eruption in East Flores, Indonesia Saturday, Nov, 9, 2024. (AP Photo)
Residents watch as Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano spews volcanic materials during an eruption in East Flores, Indonesia Saturday, Nov, 9, 2024. (AP Photo)

Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano spewed towering columns of hot ash high into the air Saturday, days after a huge eruption killed nine people and injured dozens of others.
Activity at the volcano on the remote island of Flores, in East Nusa Tenggara province, has increased since Monday’s initial eruption. On Thursday, authorities expanded the danger zone as the volcano erupted again.
Friday's activity saw the largest column of ash so far recorded at 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) high, Hadi Wijaya, the head of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation, told a news conference.
Wijaya said volcanic materials, including smoldering rocks, lava, and hot, thumb-size fragments of gravel and ash, were thrown up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the crater on Friday.
There were no casualties reported from the latest eruption as the 1,584-meter (5,197-foot) volcano shot billowing columns of ash at least three times Saturday, rising up to 9 kilometers (5.6 miles), the volcano monitoring agency said.
Authorities increased Lewotobi Laki Laki’s alert status to the highest level since Monday, and expanded the danger zone on Thursday to a radius of 8 kilometers (5 miles) on the northwest and southwest sides of the mountain slope.
“We are still evaluating how far the (danger zone) radius should be expanded,” Wijaya said. Hot clouds of ash “are currently spreading in all directions.”
The volcanic activity has damaged schools and thousands of houses and buildings, including convents, churches and a seminary on the majority-Catholic island.
Craters left by rocks falling from the eruptions measured up to 13 meters (43 feet) wide and 5 meters (16 feet) deep, experts found.
Authorities have warned the thousands of people who fled the area not to return home, as the government planned to evacuate about 16,000 residents out of the danger zone. The series of eruptions throughout the week have already affected more than 10,000 people in 14 villages, with more than half moving into makeshift emergency shelters, The Associated Press reported.
A total of 2,384 houses and public facilities were damaged or had collapsed after tons of volcanic material hit the buildings, said Kanesius Didimus, head of a local disaster management agency. It also destroyed a main road connecting East Flores district where the mountain is located to neighboring Larantuka district.
Rescue workers, police and soldiers searched devastated areas to ensure all residents had been moved out from the danger zone. Logistic and relief supplies were provided to about 10,700 displaced people in eight evacuation sites as of Saturday.
The National Disaster Management Agency said residents of the hardest-hit villages would be relocated within six months, and each family waiting to be rehoused would be compensated 500,000 rupiah ($32) per month.
About 6,500 people were evacuated in January after Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki began erupting, spewing thick clouds and forcing the government to close the island’s Fransiskus Xaverius Seda Airport. No casualties or major damage were reported, but the airport has remained closed due to seismic activity.
Three other airports in neighboring districts of Ende, Larantuka and Bajawa have been closed since Monday after Indonesia’s Air Navigation issued a safety warning due to volcanic ash.
Lewotobi Laki Laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Flores district of East Nusa Tenggara province, known locally as the husband-and-wife mountains. “Laki laki” means man, while its mate is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman. It's one of the 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago of 280 million people. The country is prone to earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.

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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”