Nau mai haere mai – and welcome to our first newsletter of 2022.

As I write, two New Zealand Navy ships are on their way to Tonga carrying water, desalination plants and food to support the island nation’s recovery, following Saturday’s violent eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai undersea volcano and the devastating tsunami it triggered.

The Tongan government has confirmed that three people have lost their lives and some islands are being evacuated because the tsunami destroyed all buildings.

The volcanic explosion generated a pressure wave so strong it was measurable across the globe. As University of Auckland volcanologist Shane Cronin explains, the volcano had been erupting regularly over the past few decades along the edges of the undersea crater, but these events were building up to the massive explosion of the deeper caldera. Geological deposits from the volcano’s historic eruptions show it is capable of such deep and violent explosions roughly every thousand years.

As damage reports continue to come in from the worst-affected areas, it’s an anxious time for Tongans living in New Zealand and Australia and elsewhere, trying to contact their families. The disaster snapped a submarine cable, cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world.

More than 95% of global data transfer occurs along fibre-optic cables that criss-cross the world’s oceans, and as disaster risk expert Dale Dominey-Howes writes, many of these cables pass close or directly over active volcanoes or earthquake zones.

Tonga is particularly vulnerable to this type of disruption as only one cable connects the capital Nuku'alofa to Fiji, but the events in Tonga highlight how fragile the global undersea cable network is.

You’ll find more coverage and other stories on our home page. Many thanks for your ongoing support and interest. Take care and all the best, mā te wā.