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A 'ghost' island that suddenly appeared in the Caspian Sea in early 2023 is playing a centuries-long game of peekaboo with scientists, and it's about to vanish once again – if it hasn't already slipped beneath the waves.
Images from two NASA satellites show a time-lapse of the island's disappearing act, from its sudden emergence between January and February of 2023 to the tiny fragment left at the end of 2024.
Satellite image of the Kumani bank appearing and slowly disappearing between 2022 and 2024. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the US Geological Survey)The island is located at the tip of the Kumani bank mud volcano, located underwater off the coast of Azerbaijan. On random occasions, when this volcano blows, an island of mud breaks through the waves and reforms about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the mainland.
The temporary land mass was first documented in May 1861. But the next year, it was gone.
In the 20th century, the island came and went at least six further times, according to records. In fact, the blob of land rarely sticks around for longer than two years, before slipping beneath the waves.
Often, mud volcano eruptions are marked by huge, rocketing jets of fire, which are so intimidatingly violent, they can sometimes be mistaken for oil rig explosions.
In 2023, however, the ghost island peeked its head above the waves without much of a fuss.
The location of Kumani Bank in the Caspian sea off the coast of Azerbaijan. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the US Geological Survey)"A new island suddenly appeared last year, which is amazing," wrote geophysicist and mud volcano enthusiast Mark Tingay on Threads in November of 2024.
"But what is even more amazing is that nobody seemed to notice!"
By nobody, Tingay meant there were no official records of the island's appearance – just satellite images he had noticed last year while studying the mud volcano hotspot that is Azerbaijan. At the time, in 2023, Tingay said he couldn't find any news, social media, or internet mentions of the island's various names in Azeri, Russian, or English.
On January 10, 2025, NASA picked a picture of the ghost island as its image of the day.
This wasn't the only time that the Kumani island has caught scientists by surprise, either.
Tingay says the Kumani mud volcano also formed an island without a fireball in 1993, and it, too, went officially unreported. Satellite images, however, clearly show it was visible at that time.
"In this current information age, where everyone is so instantly connected, it is also rather incredible that an island can pop up just 20km off the coast and no one even says anything about it!" writes Tingay on Threads.
