It's one of the 7 volcanoes around the city of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. The harbour is a caldera, a giant, collapsed volcano vent. It is so deep, it's oceanic, with fish like Marlin and Sailfish within 10 minutes of the Rabaul Yacht Club.
The volcanoes erupt about every 50 years. The city was founded by the Germans in the 1880s, some little time after the previous, but unknown to them, eruption. It seemed like a nice, fertile place. It then erupted again in the 1930s and more recently in 1994.
Because of the ongoing volcanic activity, one of the world's leading volcanological observatories is sited in Rabaul. In the lead up to the 1994 eruption, the staff there advised the government, and it got ready for a mass evacuation. When the time came, the whole city was evacuated over a few days, with only one death. That occurred when a truck backed over a man in the confusion.
Much of the city was covered in about 2 metres of ash (see photo) and so most of the city's commercial and governmental activities were moved to a new city, Kokopo, about 40 km away. Since then, much of the ash has been cleaned away and it is a thriving place once more.
Because the black sands around the harbour are partly heated by the volcanic activity, and have been for many thousand of years, it has changed be behavior of a species of bird, the megapode. In the rest of New Guinea, and Australia, these birds collect large mounds of decaying vegetation and lay their eggs in them. The heat from the decay keeps the eggs warm (no sitting on eggs for weeks for these lazy buggers). Around Rabaul, though, they simply lay the eggs in the warm sands (even lazier).
We’ve been staying home as much as possible, but work starts again tomorrow.
