A submarine volcano at Vanuatu’s Epi Island made news recently, but it is only one of many local fire mountains that keep experts and laypeople here on their toes (scroll down to volcanoes).
Here’s a 2010 news special by Australian media on some of these volcanoes; it was uploaded in 2021.
Global Volcanism Program pages on the newsmaker and Vanuatu volcanoes covered in this video:
And here are GVP pages on the other Vanuatu volcanoes with elevated alert levels:
There are even more active volcanoes here!
Figure 1, from Shreve et al., CC BY 4.0.
What is Vanuatu and why does it have so many active volcanoes and earthquakes?
As near as I can tell from a quick look-up, it is an archipelago that has formed in a subduction zone between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates — with some complications (to this layperson, anyway).
Wikipedia and Volcano Discovery are good places to start exploring these questions.
Featured image: Yasur, by Ben Jeayes/Shutterstock
Flight To Wonder 