A hydrothermal site with over 200 volcanic vents has been identified around the island of Panarea. To find out, a team of researchers from the CNR, ISPRA and INGV, in collaboration with the Navy and the University of Messina and Genoa. The study was published in Plos One
Is called tuxedoland, the hydrothermal site, with over 200 volcanic vents, discovered in the sea bed between the volcanic island of Panarea and the islet of Basiluzzo, in the Aeolian archipelago, by a group of researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council ( ISMAR-CNR), Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) and National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), in collaboration with the Navy, University of Messina and Genoa and the Marine Environment Institute coastal (Iamc-Cnr). I study, by Title Exceptional discovery of a shallow-water hydrothermal site in the SW area of Basiluzzo islet (Aeolian Archipelago, South Tyrrhenian Sea): an environment to preserve), and posted on Plos One, provides new and important information on the minero-geochemical and biological characteristics of the surface hydrothermal systems of the Mediterranean Sea. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0190710).
"The Smoking Land”, says Federico Spagnoli, ISMAR-CNR researcher, “it consists of dozens of cone-shaped structures, mainly composed of iron oxides, which have a height varying from 1 to 4 m and a base with an average diameter of about 3.8 m . Some of these vents emit acidic fluids, rich in gas, mainly carbon dioxide". Such an extensive and complex structure has no equal in the Mediterranean but only in some oceanic areas.
The discovery, the result of an intuition of Giovanni Bortoluzzi (ISMAR-CNR oceanographer, who recently passed away), was born following a series of investigations by Ingv aimed at understanding the nature of a sudden and strong exhalation activity which in November 2002 began to manifest itself copiously among the islets of Panarea. Since then, there have been numerous oceanographic campaigns on board the ships Astrea of ISPRA and Urania of the CNR and units of the Navy, to study the affected area and identify other degassing areas.
"Until in 2015, during one of these campaigns in the Aeolian Islands, on board the ship Astrea", explains Teresa Romeo, Ispra's first researcher, "the ROV (Remotely operated underwater vehicle a robot wire-guided equipped with a video camera, a camera and a mechanical arm) has not identified, in an area of the seabed south of the islet of Basiluzzo then called Smoking Land, numerous chimneys heavily colonized by algae and benthic organisms, some of which with evident leaks of hydrothermal fluids and gas bubbles".
The first data collected allowed Italian researchers to hypothesize that the Smoking Land and other areas of the zone, subject to the release of hydrothermal fluids and gas bubbles (gas venting), are due to an upwelling of deep hydrothermal gases which trigger a circulation of sea water in the bedrock, favoring the upwelling along preferential routes, in this case fault planes, and the outflow through volcanic vents and adjacent areas or accumulation in the bedrock for waterproofing the seabed.
"It is not excluded that the presence of seabed areas affected by strong degassing activity could lead to a new release of gas or to a situation like that of 2002", reports Francesco Italiano, director of the Palermo section of INGV. Hence the need for new studies to understand not only the genesis of the phenomenon but also the evolution of these underwater structures, and to activate a continuous monitoring and surveillance activity of the seabed between the island of Panarea and the islet of Basiluzzo .
Location of the field of hydrothermal vents called "Smoking Land" on the seabed around the island of Panarea.
Multibeam survey of the hydrothermal vent field called “Smoking Land”
Photos of fireplaces
