In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, more than 700 km off the west coast of Mexico, the Revillagigedo archipelago is a kind of Mexican "Galapagos", a reference to the islands off Ecuador rich in great biodiversity. .

Ten scientists from various backgrounds and universities (Dutch, Mexican, French, Cuban, German, American) took about thirty hours to reach these deserted islands by boat in mid-March - with the exception of a base Mexican naval ship - renowned among scuba diving enthusiasts for its maritime fauna (whales, dolphins, sharks...).

The aim of their week-long mission last month on the side of volcanoes in a landscape of wild moorland to sleep on the boat: to better understand the risk of eruption and the movement of tectonic plates.

"We are trying to understand how explosive and dangerous these volcanoes can be," mission leader Douwe van Hinsbergen, professor of global tectonics and paleogeography at Utrecht University, told AFP on his return to the Netherlands. .

The scientists will verify their hypotheses in the coming months based on the analysis of the rock and mineral samples they have collected.

For example, could an eruption have the same consequences on the Mexican coast as the eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai volcano in January in Tonga?

"Wherever there are islands with active volcanoes, they can generate tsunamis," said Mexican geologist Pablo Davila Harris, from the San Luis Potosi Institute for Scientific and Technological Research, to AFP.

March 10, 2022 photo released by the University of Utrech of scientists traveling the Revillagigedo Islands in Mexico's Pacific Ocean DOUWE VAN HINSBERGEN UNIVERSITY OF UTRECH/AFP

"Vulcanologists are trying to find out when the next eruption will occur," adds the expert, who refers to models based on previous eruptions.

One of the archipelago's volcanoes, Barcena, erupted in 1953, and another, Evermann, in 1993. Both remain active.

Theories

On these islands located on the ocean ridges, the team also sought to understand the origin of earthquakes, which threaten Mexico.

Mineral analysis should help understand the movement of tectonic plates.

Photo from March 10, 2022 released by the University of Utrech of the Revillagigedo Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, in Mexico DOUWE VAN HINSBERGEN UNIVERSITY OF UTRECH/AFP

"The plates are moving on the Earth's mantle. Does the mantle push the plates? Does the mantle do nothing?" Asks Douwe van Hinsbergen.

His theory: the Earth's mantle could be a "large lake of rocks that does not cause convection", ie the movement at the origin of plate tectonics.

Rather, it would be “gravity pulling the plates down. And that would simplify the whole system,” he continues.

The mission received funding from a Dutch program to study "ideas which are most certainly wrong but if not would have great implications", he asserts, half serious, half ironic.

The rock and mineral samples were sent to Europe for analysis in laboratories.

Photo from March 10, 2022 released by the University of Utrech of a scientist examining a rock in the Revillagigedo Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, in Mexico DOUWE VAN HINSBERGEN UNIVERSITY OF UTRECH/AFP

Will we learn more about volcanoes and earthquakes?

Answer at the end of the year.

© 2022 AFP