Mission to monitor seafloor fault at foot of Mount Etna

Submersion of seafloor geodetic station (Canopus acoustic beacon) off shore of Catania, aboard ship Pourquoi Pas', during FocusX1 campaign in October 2020. Marc-André Gutscher / Geo-Ocean / Focus The North Alfeo Fault runs across the seafloor at the base of Mount Etna, the tallest and currently most active European volcano, next to an urban area with a population of one million. The Focus project seeks to better understand seismic processes in action and allow for surveillance of movement along the fault. The FocusX3 mission will deploy new instruments to study tectonic displacements and movements of deep waters that are still not understood. Scientists from the CNRS, IFREMER, and Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO), together with their German and Italian colleagues, are getting ready to embark on the FocusX3 mission, to last from 17 to 27 February 2023, off the Sicilian coast. Their goal is to study a seafloor fault more than 2,000 m under the water, at the foot of Mount Etna, and to further understand the movement of water at these depths. Southern Italy has already been sorely tried by volcanic and seismic activity: earthquakes claimed 40,000 lives in 1693, and 72,000 in 1908.