Oh very quickly we have Geography Now! t-shirts. You can get these now. They're really cool

We also have Geography Now! coffee mugs you can get them look at that they come with the artwork and everything the logo for

The first time yeah, we I've never done merchandise before so yeah you guys can get these there's like a link

So as you know New Year's is coming and in light of that

I kind of wanted to talk about the topic of new this is a topical video

I wanted to do for a long time

But I never had time because I was always researching all those countries for the country videos

What are the newest islands on earth Before we jump into this though speaking of new we have a new sponsor for geography now

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Anyway, the cool thing about planet Earth is that it is a terrestrial planet with a silicate mantle

Basically that means we have lava and that means

New land can form this is a very unique thing that not a lot of planets have and even to this day

You can still witness new land being formed so today

We're gonna talk about the newest islands that have been formed on earth many Islands have been formed in the past

But they have unfortunately been washed away or eroded by the waves of the oceans in this list we're gonna

Talk about the islands that have breached the surface of the ocean and are still standing today

So let's jump into it number one Tigres Island

Which became an island in 1962 in Angola now if you watched the Angola episode you will know exactly what I'm talking about

Tigres island actually used to be a peninsula that used to jut off the coast of Angola

Over time though the ocean waves from the Atlantic broke off the isthmus that connected the peninsula

And then it became an island

Unfortunately though this meant that the people that were living on that

Peninsula were cut off from the mainland the pipeline that brought in freshwater was destroyed and to this day

Tigres Island is a ghost town virtually nobody lives there and nobody pretty much can live there because all resource were cut off anyway

Yeah

tigress island island number two formed in 1967 Surtsey island off of

Iceland again if you watch the Iceland episode you will know exactly what I'm talking about

Back in the 60s a ton of people were noticing that a huge underwater volcano was erupting

And it kept going on for about four years until it finally stopped and created Surtsey over the years it has eroded a little

Bit but it still stands today today only biologists and volcanologists are allowed to go on the island to study it

It's very rarely open to the public, but yeah, it was a pretty big event that happened in Icelandic history

And it is speculated to still stand above water for about another 100 or so years

Surtsey volcanoes whoo-hoo Island number three discovered in 2005 Greenland Uuartoq Qeqertaq

think I pronounced that right

Uuartoq Qwqertag Greenlandic language is so weird you got what that oh?

and yeah sounds anyway now one thing you have to understand about the Arctic and

Antarctic areas is that they always go through a freezing period and a melting period in the summer and winter times obviously

But in 2005 US Explorer Dennis Schmidt noticed something after sea ice had melted

Substantially in the summer of 2005 it turns out that this strange Island with three peninsulas

Had actually been detached from the mainland and since it was discovered this way for the first time it was then hence

Qualified as being a new Island, and that's where you get in the whole debate

where geologists are like

Well does sea ice

Count if it connects a landmass to another landmass, and then some will say well if it's perpetual

Ice then yes

But if it's not then no but the point is this was the first time it was discovered so it kind of counts yeah

Greenland yeah new island next one discovered in 2006 Tonga's home reef now if you don't know anything about Tonga

Which by the way?

I am so excited to do that episode when it comes up Tonga is like one of the world's fastest-growing

Inland area countries on the planet and the reason why is because Tonga lies on the Tonga trench

Which is basically a smashing point between two tectonic plates or in simpler terms?

It's a huge volcanic area underwater Tonga has a lot of places where lava just kind of bubbles up and creates new islands

It's amazing and it's beautiful now this place was actually already known of for hundreds of years

But it wasn't until 2006 when things really started to bubble up a team of oceanographers

and sailors noticed that large amounts of floating pumice and

Volcanic debris were coming out of the ocean until it finally breached the surface to this day the volcanic

Is still going on of course you know nobody would ever actually try to land on that area because you know the volcano is still

Kind of erupting but you can see it next up discovered in 2013

Russia's Yaya island located in the new Siberian islands in the Laptev sea with a link of about 370 meters by

125 the Russians got lucky by discovering it this small little wonder expanded Russia's exclusive economic zone by about

452 square kilometres, I mean not like anybody was really competing with them anyway

But basically a cargo helicopter was flying by and they noticed it and then in 2014 a research vessel

Sailed by and officially confirmed as existence basically the island was discovered

because it was under a bunch of sea ice and was never noticed before after the ice melted BAM a new island popped up and

That's the tricky thing about the Arctic. You don't really know what's under the ice ok my natural lighting is dying out

I'm gonna have to turn on my light to lighten up this room

See I always film these things that like the worst possible hours, and then the light goes down from the Sun

And then I have to turn on this light at anyway the next one Japan's (unintelligible) Nishinoshima island basically

Just like Tonga Japan lies on a bunch of trenches and tectonic plate smash zones now

It was already known that this island had existed in an underwater caldera in the 70s, but it wasn't really until

2013 when things really started moving soon a volcanic cone formed raising the island to an estimated height of

142 meters above sea level. Oh sorry

I just did a little bit more extensive research

And it turns out this island was already known of back in the 1700s a Spanish ship the Rosario passed by

But yeah basically the big part of the island hadn't formed until

2013ish and eruptions are still going on into this day the land makes up about 3 square kilometers

And finally the world's most recently formed island and still standing today Tonga's Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai

island now

There's a weird one because this is kind of like a volcanic eruption that happened

Between two islands and kind of connected them Hunga Tonga and

Hunga Ha'apai. Which is why they decided to name the new island Tonga's Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai

It's like just put the two together anyway eruptions were noticed as early as maybe 2009. However. It wasn't really until

2014-2015ish when the eruptions reached the surface of the sea and attached both of the two islands now Tonga has a lot of

Submarine volcanic activity and when this type of thing happens the superheated rock is forced up to the surface

This is because the chemical reaction between the ash and the water allows it to turn into

- hard rock whereas in other areas. It just kind of washes away. This is why Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai

I I love saying that is only the third

Volcanic island known and recorded to have survived more than a couple months a few people have actually been able to go to the island

And document it and it's really cool. It just kind of looks like this surreal lunar landscape

Type of area, but yeah, that's about it keep in mind in this list

I only included the naturally formed islands not the man-made or land reclaimed islands that have happened throughout history

And I did not include the islands that have previously formed

But then got washed away by oceanic currents such as the USA's Shelly Island

Yemen's jadeed and Schoelen Islands cavity in the Solomon Islands and Zala Cove

And I didn't really include the north frisian barrier islands off the coast of germany I mean

They're still there, but they're kind of like always underwater. They're like sandy shoals. I don't know maybe they count

Maybe they don't I don't know we'll do another episode on like tidal islands. That's a really cool phenomena too, but anyway

Yeah, I really wanted to do this episode because I thought it was really cool

Yeah, the newest islands in the world yeah, that's about it

Thank you for watching subscribe if you'd like and here's to the new year stay cool stay tuned