Live camera
Satsuma Iwojima live camera — Kagoshima
An island where Mount Io gives off a white plume without stopping. Known for the iron leaching out and staining the sea around it red-brown.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
One of the volcanoes the Japan Meteorological Agency keeps under constant watch. White plumes rise continuously from Iodake on this island.
The island is known for the sea around it turning rust red from dissolved iron. Groundwater warmed by the volcano dissolves iron, carries it out to sea, and the colour changes on contact with oxygen. So the colour of the water is itself an expression of volcanic activity, and the plume and the red sea share one frame.
This island sits on the rim of the Kikai caldera, which produced the largest eruption in Japan in the Holocene 7,300 years ago. Its ash fell across the country and remains in the strata as the Akahoya tephra. The island itself rose above the sea only after about 6,000 years ago. In 1934 an eruption began on the seabed two kilometres to the east, and in December of that year a new island, Showa-Iwojima, formed and is still there.
Mornings are best. Plumes look whiter and thicker in the colder hours and thinner as the sun climbs. In the damp air of the afternoon, plume and cloud become impossible to tell apart.
The season is winter. This is subtropical country with cloud all year, and the air dries enough for the island's outline to appear only from November to March. At night there are almost no town lights, so next to nothing shows.
About this camera
| Place | Kagoshima |
| Format | Still, every 2 min |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Volcano · Sea |
| Operator | Japan Meteorological Agency — volcano surveillance cameras |
| Terms of use | PDL 1.0 |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.
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