krakatau tour

Krakatau volcano (also often referred to as Krakatoa) is best known for its catastrophic 1883 eruption which resulted in at least 36000 deaths, primarily due to the resulting massive tsunamis inundating the surrounding coastlines. The eruption reshaped Krakatau, destroying most of the pre-1883 edifice. Krakatau is located in the shallow waters of the Sunda Strait over a brittle zone in the lithosphere where a NNE trending volcanic fault zone meets a fracture zone running in a NNW-SSE direction along which all historical volcanism at Krakatau has taken place. The Sunda Strait is seismically and tectonically active and marks a transition zone between the Sumatra and Java fault zones which are both associated with subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate under the South East Asian Plate upon which Krakatau is located. Krakatau is an unusual stratovolcano which appears to cycle through basaltic, basic andesitic, acidic andesitic and dacitic phases. Each of these cycles is thought to culminate in a massive destructive dacitic eruption before the cycle recommences at the basaltic stage (Camus et al., 1987. J. Volc. Geotherm. Res. 33, p.299-316).
In 1927, submarine eruptions marked the birth of Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) which has since risen out of the sea as a result of multiple eruptions, reaching a height of around 300m today. The following text deals with Anak Krakatau, the 1883 eruption and the eruption that last significantly shaped the Krakatau complex before 1883. The controversy surrounding the tsunami generation mechanism in 1883 and regarding the previous massive eruption (probably in 416 AD) is addressed.