Whakaari / White Island
Only a camp cat survived. In September 1914, part of the western crater rim of Whakaari collapsed, sending a lahar through the sulphur mining operation that clung to the island's interior. All ten workers vanished without a trace. Days later, a resupply ship found a single cat picking its way through the wreckage -- dubbed "Peter the Great" by the sailors who rescued it. A century later, the volcano would kill again, this time taking twenty-two lives from a group of tourists who had come to walk across what the Maori named te puia whakaari -- "The Dramatic Volcano." The name has never been wrong.
Fire Sent from the Ancestors
Maori mythology weaves Whakaari into the story of Ngatoro-i-rangi's ascent of Tongariro. Freezing on the mountain, he called to his ancestors for warmth, and they kindled fire on Whakaari and sent it to him -- a story that traces a line of volcanic activity from the Bay of Plenty to the central North Island. The name Whakaari means "to make visible" or "exposed to view," a reference to the dense columns of white steam that announced the island's presence long before any ship drew near. Captain Cook noted it in his journal, and European settlers gave it the prosaic name White Island. Both names describe the same thing: a volcano that refuses to be ignored.
Two Cones and a Broken Wall
Whakaari is an andesite-dacite stratovolcano built from two overlapping cones. The older Ngatoro Cone is extinct and partially eroded. The Central Cone remains very much active, its amphitheatre-shaped crater open to the southeast where past landslides and eruptions have torn away the wall. The crater floor sits less than 30 meters above sea level, and the sea breaches the southeastern wall in three places to form Shark Bay, Te Awapuia Bay, and Wilson Bay. Beneath the surface, the former cone is believed to have collapsed catastrophically between 3,000 and 2,200 years ago, generating a seven-meter tsunami that flooded the Bay of Plenty coast as far as seven kilometers inland. The island sits at the northern end of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, the southernmost segment of a 2,800-kilometer volcanic arc stretching from Tonga through the Kermadec Islands.
Mining on a Live Volcano
After the 1914 disaster, mining resumed in 1923 -- but the miners had learned caution. They built their huts on a flat area near a gannet colony, away from the crater. Each morning they lowered a boat from a gantry, rowed around to the factory wharf in Crater Bay, and worked until evening. When seas were rough, they scrambled along a narrow track on the crater rim instead. Sulphur had practical value before antibiotics: it was used as an antibacterial agent in medicines, in matchheads, and for sterilizing wine corks. But Whakaari's sulphur content proved too low for pure extraction, and the ground-up rock was sold as agricultural fertilizer instead. Even that business failed by the 1930s when the mineral content proved inadequate. The corroded remains of the crushing plant and bagging facility still stand, eaten alive by the same sulphuric gases the miners had come to harvest.
December 9, 2019
At 14:11 on 9 December 2019, Whakaari erupted while forty-seven people stood on its crater floor. The eruption was phreatic -- a sudden release of superheated steam and volcanic gases that launched rock and ash into the air without warning. Twenty-two people died, including two whose bodies were never recovered from the island. Recovery efforts were hampered by ongoing seismic activity, heavy rainfall, toxic gases, and low visibility. The volcano's alert level had been at Level 2, the highest before an actual eruption, indicating "moderate to heightened volcanic unrest." Tour operators had continued bringing visitors to the island under those conditions. The disaster prompted a national reckoning about the management of volcanic tourism and the responsibilities of operators who profit from proximity to danger.
A Gannet Colony on a Volcano
Despite everything -- the eruptions, the toxic gases, the acid-altered rock -- Whakaari hosts one of New Zealand's main breeding colonies of Australasian gannets. Thousands arrive each year to mate and raise chicks on an island where little vegetation grows and the ground itself vents sulphurous steam. Gannet parents harvest seaweed from the surrounding waters to cool their chicks. BirdLife International has designated Whakaari an Important Bird Area for this nesting colony. The island is privately owned by the Buttle family trust, purchased by stockbroker George Raymond Buttle in 1936. He refused to sell it to the government but agreed in 1952 to have it declared a private scenic reserve. Volcanologists from the GeoNet Project monitor Whakaari continuously via surveillance cameras, seismographs, and magnetometers installed on the crater walls. The volcano does not sleep. As of early 2025, it still emits weak to moderate gas and steam plumes.
From the Air
Located at 37.52S, 177.18E, approximately 48 kilometers from the Bay of Plenty coastline. Whakaari is visible from considerable distance as a low volcanic island trailing steam. The crater is open to the southeast, and the three bays (Shark, Te Awapuia, Wilson) are visible from altitude. Look for the yellowish crater floor and the white plume. No airstrip on the island. Nearest airports: Whakatane (NZWK) and Tauranga (NZTG) on the mainland. The island sits at the northern terminus of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Volcanic activity is ongoing -- check GeoNet alerts before any close approach. The gannet colony is visible on the flatter areas outside the crater.