March 18, 2003

A scientific party from the University of the Virgin Islands is among the scientists now conducting a comprehensive study of the submarine volcano named Kick 'em Jenny, which is located five miles north of Grenada. The study is headed by Haraldur Sigurdsson of the University of Rhode Island and facilitated by Douglas Wilson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and John Shepherd of the University of the West Indies' Seismic Research Unit in St. Augustine, Trinidad.

Kick 'em Jenny was first noticed in 1939 and has erupted 11 times since then. The last eruption was a brief episode in December of 2001. The submarine volcano is the source of moderate concern for emergency planners in the Eastern Caribbean. Fears that a tsunami generated by a major eruption could damage Caribbean coastal communities have prompted close monitoring of the volcano by the Seismic Research Unit. This monitoring and some research are funded in part by the Caribbean Development Bank.

The current study is taking place aboard NOAA's newest large research vessel, the Ronald H. Brown, which was used for UVI's Anegada Climate Tracers Study (ACTS) last year. The vessel was welcomed on its first visit to the Virgin Islands in March of 2002.

The UVI team now aboard the Ronald H. Brown is led by Kevin Brown, research specialists for the UVI Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences, and includes UVI student Leukemia Nikina Mounce, and UVI research consultants Lincoln Critchley and Celeste Mosher, both recent UVI marine science graduates. UVI research equipment also contributes to the study. A CTD (a conductivity-depth-temperature measuring) instrument was lowered to the volcano last week and is used in tandem with the Remote Observing Vehicle (ROV) that is providing high-quality imaging of the volcano.

Twice in 1996 and again in 2002, UVI teams participated in NOAA's studies of the volcano. Data from the July 1996 acoustic survey resulted in a UVI-generated image of the volcano which was featured in an article, co-authored by UVI's Roy Watlington, NOAA's Wilson and others, which appeared in the scientific journal Marine Geophysical Researches this year.

Sigurdsson may be remembered in the Virgin Islands for an exciting presentation he made in 1996 to an audience on St. Thomas. In this UVI-sponsored presentation he told of his nearly perilous 1989 descent into the crater of the volcano in a small submarine.

General news releases and more information about Kick 'em Jenny are available from the Seismic Research Unit's Web site at: http://www.uwiseismic.com/SRU_Site01/News/newsreleases.html.