Mark Tingay

@marktingay.bsky.social

The Mud Volcano Guy - I love and study mud volcanoes! Geomechanics & pore pressure specialist. Opinions my own.

🧪⚒️ The Wandan mud volcano in southern Taiwan had a minor eruption today at the vent right next to the mud volcano temple. It last erupted in November 2025. Video courtesy of my friend 張寶惠, the mud volcano temple caretaker.

⚒️🧪Fiery Mud Volcano Eruption! The Daşmərdan (Dashmardan) mud volcano in Azerbaijan erupted ~16:50 on the 30th Jan 2026. The eruption lasted ~15 mins and was accompanied by a pillar of flame several hundred meters high. Daşmərdan had previous documented eruptions in 1866, 1954, 1976, 1986 and 2011.

⚒️🧪 The Wandan mud volcano in southern Taiwan erupted again yesterday (12/11/25)! The eruption occurred at 3 vents. Sadly one vent was under a house. This is its 11th eruption in the last ~3 years, most recently in June 2025. Video courtesy of my friends 陳玉意 and 張寶惠. Best with sound on.

🧪⚒️ Mag 6.3 earthquake just north of Timor today at ~2:04am in Timor Leste (recorded on my home seismometer). No reported damage or injuries. Lots of mud volcanoes in that part of Timor that are well within potential reactivation range. I’ll look out for any news!

Seismograph recording of low frequency earthquake waves from today’s earthquake near Timor, ~2800km from my seismograph in Kuala Lumpur.

⚒️🧪 Fiery eruption of Otman-Bozdagh mud volcano in Azerbaijan! The Otman-Bozdagh mud volcano erupted at ~8:27am local time today (11/10/25). Three eruption phases of between 4-12 minutes were recorded over an ~40 minute period. Video source: @_yagha_

⚒️🧪 This week’s massive M8.8 earthquake off Kamchatka was caused by an ~160x 480km fault surface sliding by about 9m. In contrast, these lovely itsy-bitsy faults have slips of only about 1cm or so, but are no less impressive. Airport Road outcrop in Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia. Pen for scale.

Sedimentary rock made up of dozens of thin layers (a few mm each). The layers are all cut and offset by ~1cm by many small cracks.

⚒️🧪 Geophysical Institute of Peru article with preliminary findings about the new baby mud volcano reported last week. Updates include that the mud volcano was actually noticed in Nov 2024 and the gryphon has built up over the last ~3 months. The mud is room temperature. www.gob.pe/institucion/...

Columna de opinión | El “volcán más pequeño del mundo”: ¿qué encontramos realmente?

El jueves 10 y viernes 11 de julio, un equipo del Instituto Geofísico del Perú (IGP) se desplazó hasta la comunidad campesina de Songoña, en el distrito de San Pablo (provincia de Canchis, Cusco), par...

gob.pe

⚒️🧪 Today’s big earthquake near the Tanimbar Islands was close and large enough to potentially trigger eruptions in the many mud volcanoes in those islands, as has previously happened numerous times in the region. I’ve not seen any reports of mud volcanic activity, but will keep an eye out for news!

GFZ Earthquake Alerts (GEOFON)@geofon.bsky.social · last yr.

Magnitude : 6.6 Region: *Tanimbar Islands , Indonesia* Time: 2025-07-14 05:49:57 UTC Epicenter : 131.19°E 6.20°S Depth: 66 km *First posted at: 05:56 UTC* https://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/eqexplorer/events/gfz2025nqxd/general #GEOFON #GFZ #earthquake #magnitude

Map showing the earthquake of 2025-07-14 in Tanimbar Islands Region, Indonesia

🧪⚒️New baby mud volcano found in Peru! Locals first noticed this small mud volcano just to the NW of Cuzco on the 6th of July. It consists of a single ~60cm high gryphon that is gently erupting and bubbling away. Awww! Welcome to the world you cute little thing! Video: Jam Press

⚒️🧪 The Wandan mud volcano in southern Taiwan erupted again today. The eruption lasted from ~5am to ~3:40pm. This is its 10th eruption in the last 3 years, most recently the 6th July 2024. Video courtesy of my friend 張寶惠, the mud volcano temple caretaker. Best with sound on!

⚒️🧪 Thick black goop pouring from the earth is a horror often seen in TV shows or movies. Fortunately this is an amazing geological feature, and not a malevolent monster! This 1956 pic is of a natural bitumen or asphalt seep pouring into a mine shaft in Lettomanoppello, Italy. 🧵 Pic: Cazzini (2018)

Thick black rope of bitumen that has poured out of the roof of a mine shaft, snaking in big loops on the ground. Three miners are next to the seep, showing that it is taller than a person and wider than a leg. 

It’s not really relevant, but one of the miners is holding onto a chicken egg that they have put on the bitumen flow, because, well, why not??

⚒️🧪 I thought I’d lost this great mud volcano eruption video but I just found it again! I do not recommend ever driving a boat over the eruption like this person did! There is a lot of methane being released, which can ignite. Video courtesy of @Makurani_

Today's fieldwork was mostly setting up things for tomorrow... But check out this folded quartzite bed in a schist. If you look closely, you can see original cross bedding within the fold! 🤩 ⚒️🧪

A photo of a folded quartzite bed with my foot for scale (it's about 7 cm thick). it's white the rocks around it are darker and more variable, and inside it despite wiggling all over the place in ~20cm folds, you can see the original layering which is cross bedded

🧪⚒️ The Lokbatan mud volcano in Azerbaijan erupted on Wednesday the 9th April. This is Lokbatan’s 29th recorded eruption. Its most recent previous eruption was in September 2024. No fires this time, but Lokbatan has often had fiery eruptions. Video courtesy Dr Orhan Abbasov

⚒️🧪 Reported mud volcano eruption on Munaung Island, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Rakhine state hosts many big mud volcanoes, including several on Munaung Island. Video from Htun Htun Naing

🧪⚒️ This calculator was melted in a 2010 eruption of the Mount Merapi volcano in Indonesia, when a pyroclastic flow hit a group of houses. But, you may wonder whether a mighty Nokia mobile phone would survive a pyroclastic flow…

Calculator melted by volcanic eruption

⚒️🧪The Wandan mud volcano in southern Taiwan did not erupt in response to this quake ~70km away, according to its caretaker. Eruptions of Wandan are often triggered by quakes. Though many eruptions have no quake trigger and sometimes nearby large quakes (like this week’s) don’t trigger any eruption.

Jascha Polet@jascha.bsky.social · 2y ago

Shallow M6.0 #earthquake in Taiwan, reverse faulting inland near major population centers. However, USGS PAGER has determined a low likelihood of casualties and damage. 🧪⚒️ earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Map of population density and historic earthquakes for Taiwan, generated at https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000pl8h/pager

⚒️🧪 Unconfirmed reports of a very small eruption of the Pugachevskiy mud volcano on Sakhalin island, Russia on the 15th January. Always nice seeing mud volcanoes in the snow! Pugachevskiy is most famous for the lovely ‘Eye’ photograph that I’ll post below Video: Sakhalin_News