Billowing ash plumes, molten sulfur droplets, feisty shrimp feasting on fish killed by noxious gases, red lava jetting from a vent–they’re all part of the action recently filmed at an underwater volcano in the western Pacific Ocean.

The images are the first ever direct observations of an active, submarine arc volcano. These volcanoes grow near trenches that form where one piece of Earth’s oceanic crust slips beneath another.