New submarine volcanoes and a sunken wreck discovered in the Strait of Sicily

Three large submarine volcanoes, various hydrothermal phenomena and the wreck of a ship were discovered in the Sicilian Channel during the international scientific expedition M191 SUAVE, in which the OGS also took part. The campaign was conducted on board the German vessel METEOR and was completed a few days ago.

The new volcanoes are at least 6 kilometres wide and rise more than 150 metres above the surrounding seabed. They join a series of other volcanic cones discovered by the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics - OGS 2019 in the marine area between Mazara del Vallo and Sciacca.

The wreck was discovered thanks to the mapping of the seabed carried out during the campaign and its position was reported to the Italian maritime authorities. It is a 100-metre long and 17-metre wide ship lying at a depth of 110 metres near Banco Senza Nome, about halfway between the volcanic island of Linosa and Sicily.

The other institutes involved in the expedition were: ​​​​​ GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (coordinator), University of Malta (co-proposer with OGS), MBARI - Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (USA), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zeland), the Universities of Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh (UK) and Kiel University (Germany).