Penguin Bank
now-submerged shield volcano of the Hawaiian Islands
Penguin Bank is the name given to a now-submerged shield volcano of the Hawaiian Islands. Its coral-capped remains lie immediately west of the island of Molokaʻi, under relatively shallow water (see bathymetric map at the right).
Geology
The Penguin Bank volcano is part of the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain. It was one of the seven principal Cenozoic Era volcanoes that formerly constituted the prehistoric island of Maui Nui, along with West Molokaʻi, East Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, West Maui, East Maui, and Kahoʻolawe. The date of the last eruption is unknown, but shield-building eruptions likely ended entirely 2 million years ago with no evidence of a rejuvenated stage.
This volcano like all other volcanoes of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain would have formed in a series of stages such as pre-shield, shield-building/subaerial, and post-shield that was divided into two rift-zones broken by a summit caldera. This volcano could have stood roughly 4,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level. However, Penguin Bank could have produced low viscosity lava and would therefore be broader in comparison to its former height (making it no more than 3,000 feet).
Penguin Bank was once thought to be an extended rift-zone of the West Molokai volcano, but the discovery of Kaena ridge being an independent volcano located off the coast of western Oahu likely influenced this ocean bank to be an independent volcano as well. Unlike Kaena, Penguin Bank wasn't fully proven to be independent from neighboring volcanos.
“Penguin Bank” enters the record as now-submerged shield volcano of the Hawaiian Islands. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Penguin, Bank and now-submerged can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7162757. Authority coordinates are 21.050, -157.700. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Penguin Bank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.