For lava chasers and the volcano curious, is the thrill worth the risk?
People viewing the lava field after Iceland's Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted after 800 years in 2021. Source: Getty / Sophia Groves When Italy's Mt Etna erupted this week, it put on the kind of spectacular display that can stir fanatics and the volcano-curious into taking a closer look at some of the world's most awe-inspiring attractions. Amid signs volcano tourism is growing more popular, researchers and travel experts warn there are very real risks to visiting those that don't lie dormant. "There was a big explosion and a crater collapsed but luckily it fell into a deserted area," Salvo Cocina, the head of Sicily's Civil Protection Department, told the Reuters news agency. "It's very hard to block access, you can't fence it off," he added. Cocina said dozens of hikers had ventured on to Etna despite a warning of increased signs of volcanic activity being issued early that day.
Mt Etna's eruption was "strombolian", Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said, and produced what might be "one of the most famous pyroclastic flows of our time", Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the agency, wrote on X. That moniker comes from Italy's Mt Stromboli, which boatloads of tourists visit every year. Many climb up to the summit to experience the thrill of witnessing the dance of fire and ash at this active volcano which has "exhibited nearly constant lava fountains for the past 2,000 years", according to the Global Volcanism program. It has left an everlasting impact on volcanology, in that continuous but mild volcanic activity has come to be known as 'strombolian activity', in which volcanoes fling pieces of very hot rock (as high as 800C) and blobs of lava far and wide. "When volcanoes like Etna in Italy and Kilauea in Hawaii erupt spectacularly like they did this year, there are increased enquiries for tours," said John Seach, an Australian vulcanologist and astrophysicist, who have been in the volcano tour business for 40 years and visited over 200 volcanoes.
Not only is Mt Etna a popular tourist attraction — with some reports suggesting it attracts upwards of a million visitors each year — it is also "one of the most active volcanoes on earth and a reasonably frequently-erupting one," said Prof Teresa Ubide Garralda, a volcano scientist at the University of Queensland. "The current activity started in March and has been on and off since then," Garralda said. She said that even though countries have effective monitoring systems in place around active volcanoes, it is difficult to precisely forecast the exact time of an eruption. "Earthquakes triggered by the movement of magma inside the volcano, images of inflation or deflation in the ground and the emission of gases can help forecast potential eruptions but it's difficult to accurately say exactly when that happens," she said.
Volcanoes attract million of tourists from around the world, according to the British Geological Survey, and there are signs popularity has grown over time. In Iceland, one of the most volcanically active places in the world, foreign tourist numbers grew from around 488,600 in 2010 to about 2.25 million in 2024. Numbers have hovered around the 2 million mark since 2017, though they dipped between 2020 and 2022 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many countries closed their borders before gradually reopening. Interest has also picked up among Australians since international borders repoened, according to Brett Mitchell, the ANZ managing direction of Intrepid Tours, which sells tours that include volcano experiences. He said there's been a 54 per cent increase in bookings since 2023.
When Indonesia's Marapi volcano suddenly erupted in late 2023, there were 75 people hikers on the mountain at the time. Some 24 of them, including young university students, died, according to an ABC report. In 2019, New Zealand's Whakaari, also known as White Island, erupted during a tour group visit. Forty-seven people were on the island at the time and 22 of them, including 17 Australians, died. The others were seriously injured. Judge Evangelos Thomas presided over the subsequent trial brought by New Zealand's workplace health and safety regulator. When it ended in March last year, he said several tour operators and the island's owners, Whakaari Management Limited, had "used an active volcano to make money". He also said one tour operator had not adequately briefed tourists on safety information. Some NZ$10.21 million ($9.56 million) in reparations were ordered to be paid to families of victims and survivors. Whakaari Management Limited, who was ordered to pay $4.57 million of the total figure, appealed that decision. New Zealand's High Court quashed the conviction and its share of the payments in February, with a judge reasoning it did not manage or control the walking tour workplace. Prof Raymond Cas, an emeritus professor at Monash University and one of Australia's leading volcanologist, was engaged as an expert by families of victims and survivors during the trial. "With Whakaari, tourists weren't warned they could die in the event of an eruption," Cas said. "It was clear the information given to those tourists was inadequate. The island is very remote and the tour involves walking inside an amphitheatre-like crater with no exit. The tourist brochure painted the experience as a volcanic wonderland, making it sound very much like the geothermal areas in Rotorua," added Cas, who has visited Whakaari many times as a student and researcher.
Cas said the tourists were also not told that a few nights before the tragedy, there was a significant explosive event in which deposits inundated the crater area. He said: "The tour guides weren't qualified vulcanologists — if you're leading a tour group in an active volcano, you must be adequately trained. As far as I'm aware, there's no requirement for volcano tour guides to be qualified vulcanologists." He believes that's "totally unethical". "People don't fully understand the danger. They're making assumptions that because tours are being offered, they must be safe. And that the government and tour operators have done the due diligence regarding legal requirements and other compliance," he said. Seach, who sits at a unique intersection of being a vulcanologist, avid lava chaser and experienced tour guide, says seeing an eruption is "one of the greatest sights in nature, but the challenge must be accepted with common sense and knowledge of the risks". He said participants on his tours travel at their own risk. "All reasonable care is taken on tours, but volcanic activity is unpredictable, and no guarantee can be made about safety on an active volcano. A decision to climb an erupting volcano should be based on a risk-benefit analysis," reads a part of the safety note he provides his tour group members. Travel and tourism New Zealand
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