Huge Pumice Rock 'Island' Seen Floating In South Pacific

First time accepted submitter ZombieBraintrust writes "Pumice, the lightweight stone used to smooth skin, is usually found in beauty salons, but on Thursday sailors from New Zealand's Royal Navy found nearly 10,000 square miles of the lava rock bobbing on the surface of the South Pacific Ocean."

Comments

not exactly an island

[Trepidity]

If it's like previous pumice rafts, it's more like a large area of debris than a big island. Here's a random photo showing a boat plowing a path through one made up of smaller pieces. Not really the kind of thing you can walk around on, though the description of this one having an edge like an ice-shelf makes it sound like it may have larger rocks in it. Here is a NASA satellite photo of a 2006 occurrence with a more obvious origin (it's adjacent to an erupting volcano).

Re:not exactly an island

[Spiridios]

If you click through to TFA's TFA, you'll see they properly used the term "raft" unlike MSN. They also mentioned that their vessel plowed right through it, even though "The rock appeared to be sitting above the surface of the waves and when lit up looked like the edge of an ice shelf."

For further terminology bending, the Daily Mail calls it a rock ice-shelf. They also have a pic of it that looks more frothy than island or ice-shelf like.