This volcanic island is 5.5 km long by 4.0 km wide, elevation is 704 mtrs (2309 ft). The crater is about 400 mtrs across.
The volcano discharges about 1300 tons a day of sulphur dioxide, and over a year it is 474,500 tons, and global warming is supposed to be our fault.
From Hong Kong to Osaka we passed close to this island, which is about 50 km from the mainland of Japan – Kagoshima Province.
The island has a ferry service from the mainland, which runs twice a week and takes about three hours. The island doesn’t have an airport.
Population in 2006 was 121, I couldn’t find any updates – but allowing for inflation, when everything doubles in ten years, I’d say the population today is around 250.
As you see it was a beautiful day.
The small white boat can be seen on the full picture – had to shrink so as to post.
We passed the island and fortunately it didn’t erupt. The volcano is considered to be ‘restless’, which was noticed by satellites in 2013, when white plumes rose from the crater to about 400 mtrs above the island.
A farewell picture – it was lunchtime.
This island is named Satsuma Iwo Jima, and is part of the Satsunan Shotō group of islands.
These islands don’t have anything to do with the Iwo Jima island of WW2 fame, which is 1000 km directly south of Tokyo, and is part of the Ogasawara Islands Group.
There is another Iōjima, which is near Nagasaki.
The above blog is due to friends in the UK who commented that I’d missed off passing the volcanic island, when I blogged of the Diamond Princess’ passage from Hong Kong to Osaka – they were also on the Diamond Princess at the time – I can’t get away with anything :- o)
silverfox175 