St. Augustine, Trinidad – September 15th, 2025 – The UWI Seismic Research Centre (SRC) has recorded a recent period of unrest at the submarine volcano Kick ’em Jenny (KeJ), located off the coast of Grenada.
Between 18:00 local time on Wednesday 27th August and 08:00 local time on Thursday 28th August 2025, SRC’s monitoring network recorded an increase in seismic activity at the submarine volcano Kick ’em Jenny (KeJ). Approximately 800 events were detected during this initial period, with the largest ranging from M2.2 to 2.4.
On Friday 29th August, activity declined with 72 events being recorded in the magnitude range M1.4-1.8. Over the weekend, activity further reduced with 1-2 events recorded daily, indicating a return to background activity.
Throughout the episode of unrest, the SRC provided several advisories to the National Disaster Management Agency (NaDMA) with updates on the ongoing activity. During the period of unrest, four media releases were disseminated by NaDMA and were subsequently shared on the UWI-SRC social media platforms. Questions from the public were answered and links to the KeJ main page and FAQ page were circulated to ensure the public had easy access to reliable information.
The most recent unrest, prior to this episode, occurred in February 2024, when over 3,400 seismic events were detected, with magnitudes up to 3.3. No explosion signals (T-phases) were observed. Another significant period of elevated seismicity occurred between 11 April and 5 June 2020, which also did not culminate in eruptive activity. The last confirmed eruption of KeJ was on 29 April 2017. Since then, short-lived unrest episodes have been recorded in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2024 each beginning with intensifying seismicity and then rapidly decaying to quiescence.
It is considered that KeJ volcanic earthquakes are associated with magma intrusion, pressure changes from magma crystallisation or degassing, or a combination of these processes. The 2017 eruption demonstrated that KeJ is capable of erupting without significant precursory seismic activity. Alternatively, the volcano could continue to exhibit periodic seismic unrest with or without eruption.
KeJ remains at alert level Yellow at all times and a 1.5km exclusion zone must be observed by all marine vessels in the vicinity. The UWI-SRC continues to closely monitor Kick ’em Jenny and will issue timely advisories should activity change. Updates will be provided by NaDMA and the UWI-SRC via official channels. The public is reminded to seek and share information from these two verified sources.
SeaBeam image of Kick-’em-Jenny showing craters and domes. During a research cruise in March 2003 scientists discovered three craters (C1, C2 and Kick-’em-Jack) and two domes (D1 and D2) near Kick-’em-Jenny.
