Whoa—A New Island Appeared From Out of Nowhere
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
A team of researchers discovered a new island in the Caspian Sea using space images.
Cyclical sea changes, climate change, and shifting tectonic plates may all be reasons that the isle has breached the water's surface.
Researchers anticipate the island becoming a valuable refuge for rare bird species and Caspian seals in the future.
Although the ocean covers roughly 71% of Earth's surface, more than 80% of that ocean has yet to be mapped, explored, or even seen by humans. So, it isn't surprising that some stray land formations go unnoticed—like a whole new island in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, recently discovered by researchers from Russia.
The currently unnamed island is located 19 miles southwest of Maly Zhemchuzhny Island, Russia. According to a translated report from TSS (a state-owned Russian news agency), a team from the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (IO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) originally identified the formation in November of 2024 via imaging captured from space. The images showed a small sliver of dried bank peaking above the water (though this wasn't convincing enough evidence for some researchers).
Since then, the team has made an expedition to the northern part of the island and officially confirmed its existence. However, researchers were unable to make landfall because of shallow waters and poor weather conditions.
'It is obvious that during the low-water period, when the water level is minimal, the island's elevation above the water's edge will be more significant,' the report reads. 'At the time of the survey, the island's surface was a damp flat plain complicated by ridges of sand waves.'
The island's emergence is thanks to a perfect storm of events. 'The occurrence of new islands in the Caspian Sea is associated with cyclical processes of long-term fluctuations in the level of [these] landlocked waters,' Stepan Podolyako, a senior researcher at IO RAS, wrote in the statement to Live Science. 'Awash islands are uplifts on the seabed that come to the surface during periods of falling sea level.'
And this isn't the first time the area has seen shallow waters—according to Podolyako, Caspian Sea water levels fell during the 1930s, 1970s, and the 2010s. He says the cyclical levels of the Caspian Sea depend partly on evaporation rates, so the water level could be attributed to climate change. The warming global temperatures associated with climate change speed up the water cycle (which includes evaporation), leaving certain areas in extreme droughts and others with overwhelming amounts of precipitation. Podolyako also cited tectonic plate shifts as a potential reason for the sea level changes.
As for the future of the island, Podolyako said that the next expedition is planned for the latter half of 2025. Once researchers investigate the isle and identify any distinguishing features, the team will decide on a name. Excitingly, the IO RAS anticipates that the island may become a valuable nesting site for rare bird species and a rookery (or a breeding place of a colony) for Caspian seals.
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