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Cameraman Joshua Vela-Fonseca was about 28 miles away when a volcano in the Galapagos Islands started erupting last month.

“There was a big orange light,” said Mr Vela-Fonseca, who was on a scientific expedition in the area when the Wolf Volcano began spewing ash and lava on the night of January 6th. ”

Neither the ash clouds nor the lava pouring from the volcano’s slopes posed a safety risk to the people on the expedition. Mr. Vela-Fonseca, 28, took out his camera and started shooting.

Days later, he and a handful of others captured remarkable images of a river of fire curving for miles in a streak that bright orange. visible from space.

“Other cultures see volcanoes as gods and nature’s wrath talking to us,” said Mr Vela-Fonseca of the Galápagos over the phone.

“But we’re not afraid of them, that’s for sure,” he added. “Ours are not explosive or violent. They are very, very gentle and last a long time. It’s just fascinating to see.”

‘Very hot and runny’

Some volcanic eruptions are notable for their sheer force. The last on the Tongan coastfor example, it produced hundreds of times the mechanical energy created when it was produced. US military razed HiroshimaJapan, with an atomic bomb in August 1945, NASA analysis.

Michael Stock, a professor of geochemistry at the University of Dublin in Ireland, said such volcanoes produce explosive ash clouds when gas bubbles are pressurized because they cannot escape the sticky magma below the ground.

“The magmas erupting at Wolf Volcano don’t contain a lot of gas, but they’re also very hot and fluid, allowing existing gas bubbles to escape easily,” said Professor Stock. “Therefore, the system does not become pressurized and constantly produces relatively benign lava flows.”

According to Jorge Carrión and Washington Tapia Aguilera, the Wolf eruption was visually spectacular, in part because it took place on a moonless night and 60 miles from the nearest human habitation. Galapagos Conservation Areais a nonprofit organization based in Virginia. Mr. Carrión captured the early stages of the eruption in a time-lapse video he took from near the top of the volcano at about 5,580 feet.

Change of plan

Wolf Volcano biggest and longest Volcano in the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago about 600 miles west of the Ecuadorian continent. Isabela, a nearby volcano on the same island, named after Charles DarwinHe proposed the theory of evolution after studying finches in the archipelago in the 1830s.

Vela-Fonseca and others were in the area as part of a naturalist expedition organized by the Wolf when it exploded after 11 pm on 6 January. Cookson AdventuresLondon-based travel company founded by polar explorer Henry Cookson.

After the eruption, the expedition became a mission to rescue park rangers and scientists, including Mr. Carrión, who was conducting fieldwork on the volcano. In the first light of January 7, Cookson Adventures organized two helicopters to fly them to safety.

Passengers in these helicopters got a close-up view of the molten lava as it floated down the southeast flank of the volcano. Mr Cookson said in an email that at some points lava was ejected up to 200 meters into the air.

“The pilots weren’t very comfortable,” said Mr Vela-Fonseca, who was aboard a support ship used by helicopters as a staging area for flights over lava. No one was killed or injured as a result of the explosion.

Postpone for biodiversity

In the days after these helicopter flights, Cookson Adventures planned to fly Ecuador’s environment minister, Gustavo Miranda, to the area so he could assess the biodiversity risk. primary concern, pink iguanaA species that lives in Wolf Volcano and was first seen in 1986. Scientists say there are only about 200 breeding adults today.

Fortunately, the eruption occurred on the opposite side of the volcano, where pink iguanas and other endemic species are located. giant turtlesmainly alive.

Mr. Carrión and Mr. Tapia Aguilera said in an email that as the lava cools, they will aid evolutionary models of Galapagos biodiversity by harboring seeds, insects, small reptiles and birds.

“Life never stops,” they wrote.

However, the lava has not cooled completely yet. Fresh lava was flowing from Wolf Volcano as of last week, according to Mr. Vela-Fonseca and Anahi Concari, a naturalist guide from the Galapagos who has recently visited the area.

The Institute of Geophysics, a research organization in Ecuador, reported last month that Wolf Volcano’s “explosive activity” was declining. He also said that Wolf may yet come back to life – just as he was during his time. final explosion phasein May and June of 2015.

Mr Vela-Fonseca said on Monday Wolf plans to revisit the lava flows.

Galápagos residents welcome the eruptions because they point to a place where nature tourism drives the economy, and the archipelago’s black-and-red volcanic deposits are a constant reminder of how it formed in the first place.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. “We see lava fields everywhere.”