The Canary Islands become a crucial geological fault line in the novel: their volcanic seamounts conceal methane hydrates that may be destabilized by rapidly advancing worms, and a collapse at La Palma could send a tsunami across the Atlantic. What appears on conventional charts as a steep, inhospitable seabed is revealed to contain overlooked terraces and sediment, making the islands both a setting for scientific discovery and the site of a danger whose consequences would reach far beyond the archipelago.

Volcanic Geography and Hidden Deposits

The islands lie in an upwelling zone, where cold, nutrient-rich water rises from the depths and supports abundant plankton and fish. That productivity should, in turn, encourage methane hydrates to accumulate on the seabed: organic matter sinks and decays, and methane collects at depth. Yet the conventional charts showed little methane around the Canary Islands. The apparent contradiction becomes a problem of terrain rather than biology. The islands are the visible peaks of volcanic formations rising from depths of 3,000 to 3,500 metres; their steep sides carry sediment and organic matter downward before it can settle.

Stanley Frost suspects that this account of the seabed is incomplete. Though the volcanic slopes are steep, he reasons, they are not smooth vertical walls. Volcanic formations bear ridges and terraces, and those irregular surfaces can catch sediment. In his reconstruction, hydrates need not occur as large exposed deposits: they may run through the rock in thin veins and collect wherever sediment has settled. The islands’ apparent lack of hydrates on standard charts therefore reflects where investigators looked and what they expected to find, not necessarily what is present.

La Palma as a Focus of Investigation

Frost, a volcanologist rather than a hydrate specialist, brings Gerhard Bohrmann into the investigation. Their list of potentially vulnerable volcanic islands includes La Palma, Hawaii, Cape Verde, Tristan da Cunha and Réunion, but La Palma stands out as the most serious concern. If Frost’s interpretation is correct, the Cumbre Vieja ridge above the island could be a source of danger hanging two thousand metres above the lives of millions.

With Bohrmann’s help, Frost’s team obtains the research vessel Polarstern for an expedition. Its deep-sea remotely operated vehicle, Victor 6000, is sent down the western side of La Palma, within sight of shore. The descent is a practical test of the geological argument: Victor searches the steep volcanic face systematically, while the expedition works in an environment where equipment can disappear into the depths. At 400 metres, the vehicle encounters overlapping terraces jutting from the rock like balconies, their surfaces covered with sediment. The discovery supplies the kind of terrain Frost had argued was missing from the simplified picture of the seabed.

The Threat beneath the Slope

The novel later places the hydrate deposits within an active biological crisis. On 14 August, Gerhard Bohrmann looks out to sea from the Heerema, aware that millions of worms carrying billions of bacteria are advancing through thin hydrate veins 400 metres below. The danger is no longer only a conjecture about where methane might lie: the deposits form a substrate through which the worms are moving, connecting the islands’ overlooked geology to the wider threat of hydrate destabilization.

The Heerema is deployed as a semi-submersible platform capable of working offshore. Its pontoons sit partly below the waves, while a broad deck rests on six columns; at a draught of 21 metres and with a displacement capacity exceeding 100,000 tonnes, it is designed for stability in rough seas. Two large cranes serve different tasks: one lowers a suction tube into the water, while the other handles a separate lighting unit equipped with cameras. The platform’s scale and specialized equipment make the intervention possible, but also underscore how much of the response depends on machinery operating over a dangerous seabed.

A Local Collapse with Transoceanic Consequences

The forecast attached to a possible collapse at La Palma gives the islands a scale far beyond their own shores. The Canaries would be devastated first; about an hour later, a wave around 100 metres high would strike the northwest African coast. Six to eight hours after the eruption, a wave around 50 metres high would cross the Caribbean, devastate the Antilles and flood the American east coast from New York to Miami. Brazil would be hit soon afterward, while smaller waves would reach Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. The consequences would extend into central Europe, where the European economy would collapse.

These consequences are presented as a projection conditional on Frost’s fears being justified, not as a completed eruption. Their force lies in the chain they make visible: volcanic slopes, sediment, hydrates, worms, a possible collapse and waves crossing an ocean basin. The Canary Islands thus shift from a remote location on a geological chart to a pivotal point in a crisis where apparently local seabed conditions can threaten distant populations and economic systems.