Newly Discovered Undersea Volcano Named by Committee of Scientists Who Clearly Ran Out of Ideas

A newly discovered submarine volcano in the western Pacific has been officially designated 'Seamount 7742-B' by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, a name so devoid of character that even the committee that assigned it has described the process as 'a failure of collective imagination.' 'We were in that room for fourteen hours,' said naming committee chair Dr. Obsidian Wells. 'The first twelve hours were productive. We had candidates: Prometheus Mons, Vulcan's Anvil, Hephaestus Rise. Elegant names. Evocative names. And then someone on the committee objected to Greco-Roman naming conventions as Eurocentric, someone else objected to the alternatives as insufficiently scientific, and by hour thirteen we were too tired to object to anything.' The committee's final vote was 6-4 in favor of Seamount 7742-B, with the four dissenting votes split between 'literally anything else' and an abstention described in the minutes as 'despairing.' 'Seamount 7742-B is accurate,' Dr. Wells conceded. 'It is a seamount. It is the 7,742nd catalogued in its sector. The B distinguishes it from Seamount 7742-A, which is 40 kilometers to the north. What it lacks in poetry it makes up for in alphanumeric precision.' The naming has drawn mockery from marine geologists, who note that the seamount is a 4,200-meter-tall volcanic structure with an active hydrothermal vent system that supports a unique biological community. 'It's a cathedral of fire on the ocean floor,' said deep-sea researcher Dr. Vent Plume. 'And they named it like a parking space.' Dr. Wells has announced that future naming committees will be limited to six hours. 'After six hours, cognitive function declines and you get Seamount 7742-B,' he said. 'The ocean deserves better. I'm not sure we can deliver it, but it deserves better.'