The first close monitoring of the active submarine volcano Kolumbo, north of Santorini island, was achieved!

A total of three oceanographic cruises were performed as part of our sister research project SANTORY with main objective to deploy various innovative instruments near the seabed inside the underwater volcano Kolumbo.

The active hydrothermal vent system of Kolumbo (vents at ~500 m depth) was studied in detail with the installation of a seafloor observatory, which is a new generation automated geochemical recording system that collects data of acoustics, dissolved CO2 and CH4, O2, T °C, hydrostatic pressure, EC, pH, and turbidity. RAMONES participated in installing multiple sensors, stand-alone optical cameras, multispectra and a stereo camera and carrying out various in situ measurements.

Radioactivity contribution and the effects to the vent’s ecosystem were investigated by real-time measurements achieved by the prototype radioactivity sensors γSniffer sand the γ-radiation imager SUGI in collaboration with RAMONES project. The first evaluation of the collected data reveals that the volcano is more active than what was previously thought.