Submarine Eruption in the Black Sea off Georgia Not Likely

MODIS Image of a phytoplankton bloom in the Black Sea, taken June 3, 2012. The supposed submarine eruption off Georgia would be on the far right of the sea. Image: NASA Goddard / Flickr Sometimes I run across news I have no idea how to tackle. This article in Earthweek was just such a piece of news-- not because it was poorly written or reported, but rather the news just didn't make sense. In this article, it is stated rather matter-of-factly that an undersea cable in the Black Sea between Poti in Georgia and Sochi in Russia had been severed by a submarine lava flow. The Earthweek article is short, so I dug around some more and sure enough, another news source claimed the same thing, with a quote from Kote Samushia, CEO of the cable-owner company: "I think that this should be the eruption of an underwater volcano." Why ...