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researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has confirmed that a massive undersea mountain that was found off the coast of Bengkulu, would not cause a tsunami if it erupted.

LIPI'€™s Nugroho Hananto said that the undersea mountain, which is 3,000 meters high and 56 kilometers in diameter, was not an underwater volcano.

'€œI want people living in the Bengkulu area not too worry about it. Just let it [the seamount] cool off,'€ he said over the weekend.

He added that the sea mountain was first identified in 2009 during a project to map the seabed'€™s seismic fault lines along Sumatra'€™s coast.

A project conducted in the following years detailed the seamount further. The research was jointly conducted by LIPI, the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, and France-based CGGVeritas and Institut de Physique du Globe (IPG).

Although LIPI has announced that the seamount is not an underwater volcano, Bengkulu Governor Junaidi Hamsyah said earlier this month, that it was an underwater volcano.

Junaidi based his statement on a discovery by French scientists who found the seamount in 2009. '€œThat volcano is still active and it is becoming a threat to the people of Bengkulu. If I announce it to them, they will be afraid of doing anything [at sea], but if not, I am afraid that it will suddenly erupt,'€ he said as quoted by kompas.com last week.

Yusuf Rachman, a researcher with BPPT, said in 2009 that the seamount could have been identified as a volcano because of its conical shape. However, the agency has recently confirmed that, based on its further investigation, the seamount was not a volcano and that it would not cause any danger.

LIPI'€™s, Nugroho said that both his institution and BPPT would brief Bengkulu Governor and the public on their findings.

'€œWe don'€™t want people to assume that the seamount was formed by the 2004 Aceh tsunami or that it could cause a tsunami with a similar magnitude in Bengkulu,'€ he said.

Nugroho said that the seamount in Bengkulu was a result of regular oceanic plate movement.

'€œIn the waters off Bengkulu, the plate moves at a speed of 5.7 centimeters per year. It formed a seamount because the moving plate had passed a hot spot, moving lava underneath the earth'€™s surface,'€
he said.

He added that the seamount could even create an anti-seismic zone. '€œIf the seamount was subducted, the seamount and the area within a certain distance of the seamount would be an anti-seismic zone,'€ he said.

The LIPI researcher also said that seamounts were not a new phenomenon in Indonesia.

The country has hundreds of seamounts in its waters, given the fact that it is located in the Pacific ring of fire. He said that besides the one off Bengkulu, there were hundreds of seamounts in the South Java sea and one underwater volcano off the coast of Sangihe, North Sulawesi. (koi)