Off the coast of the island of Hawaii, hundreds of millions of gallons of lava are flowing into the ocean like blood from a ruptured artery. Starting in January at Kīlauea Volcano’s Kamokuna ocean entry, the lava hit the salty water, shooting molten rock upward and outward, accompanied by a rising, steamy cloud of acid.

Normally cooling lava would stack up, creating a rocky shelf on which the lava settles called a lava delta. But this time, the flow continued to gush nearly 100 feet down, into the sea, for a whole month.

This same volcano has sent lava traveling through tubes from moving vents along its East Rift Zone known as Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, ever since it erupted 34 years ago. And these tubes have carried it to a number of spots along the ocean. But streams like this usually only last a day or two. This one lasted from New Year’s Eve, when 21 acres of lava delta collapsed into the ocean, exposing the tube, until Thursday, when an unstable seacliff collapsed and finally cut off the picturesque stream.

On Wednesday the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory noted that the sea cliff just near the entry was becoming increasingly unstable, and could collapse at any moment. By 6 p.m. E.T. Thursday, a crack in the seacliff split open and it fell into the sea. Lava is still flowing into the ocean, said Janet Babb, a geologist at the observatory, who monitors the volcano, in an email Thursday night. But she was uncertain that the fire hose flow was still visible.