Mehetia

About Mehetia

The 1.5-km-wide, steep-sided island of Mehetia (known as Me'etia or Meket'ia in the Tahitian and Tuamotuan languages, respectively), the youngest and SE-most of the Society Islands, lacks a well-developed fringing coral reef. The ~400-m-high island is the summit of a large volcano that rises 4,000 m from the sea floor. An older edifice is formed of a lava flow sequence overlain by hydromagmatic deposits and Strombolian ejecta. The summit crater, 150 m wide and 80 m deep, has been the source of the youngest lava flows on the island (Binard et al., 1993). Polynesian legends mention "large fires," and the lack of vegetation on some lava flows suggests that the latest activity occurred within the last 2,000 years (Talandier and Custer, 1976). Other recent activity originated from a submarine crater at 2,500-2,700 m depth on the SE flank.