How Big is the Biggest Volcano?

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]What's the largest volcano in the world?

[00:00:02]It depends on who you ask. Here are the top three that people [clears throat] are fighting over, and by the end, you decide the winner. First up, Mauna Kea, a volcano that last erupted thousands of years ago. Its summit reaches over 4,000 m above sea level. It's so high that even though it's in Hawaii, it gets snow on its peak. But its base extends [music] even deeper below the ocean, making it the tallest volcano from base to peak. Second up, Mauna Loa. It's not as high, but it's twice as massive, meaning it is heavy. It's so heavy that its weight has sunken the crust of the Earth. It last erupted in 2022, making it the largest active volcano. But if you don't care when it last erupted, you got to look here.

[00:00:39]Yeah, those two little rocks don't look like much, but in 2020, using sonar, scientists realized that there was much more below. Beneath the water is a volcano with twice the volume of Mauna Loa, but only a third [music] of it is above the seafloor. The rest is buried underneath. That's because it's so heavy that it's caused Earth's crust and the volcano to sink hundreds of meters over millions of years. And that makes Gardner Pinnacles the most [music] massive volcano. So which do you think is the biggest? Subscribe.