A team of scientists are assessing the risks of a major eruption near a wildly popular Greek island, only weeks after earthquakes that forced locals to flee. Santorini, perhaps the most famous of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea, shut down in February in a succession of quakes, as the islands 11,000-odd locals escaped to safety.
The first struck on January 26, with more than 20,000 earthquakes measuring more than one on the Richter scale following in its wake up to February 22, according to the Interdisciplinary Committee for Risk and Crisis Management at the University of Athens. One of them measured a whopping 5.3 on the richter scale.
But, as well as sitting above tectonic plate, Santorini also happens to be the site of a dormant, underwater volcano, a fact that is chiselled into the island’s landscape.
Its distinctive crescent shape, likened to a horseshoe, is the result of a major blast that occurred in the distant past.
Santorini is also situated along a string of volcanoes known as the Hellenic Island Arc, and fears have grown that a major eruption could one day strike again.
Prof Isobel Yeo, a marine volcanologist and expert in these volcanoes at UK’s National Oceanography Centre, is leading a mission with almost two dozen scientists to assess the risk of another disaster, and how big it could be.
Speaking to BBC News aboard the RRS Discovery, she explained that while underwater volcanoes get much less attention than famous above-ground stratovolcanoes that tower over us, they’re “capable of really big, really destructive eruptions”.
“We are lulled into a sense of false security if you’re used to small eruptions and the volcano acting safe,” she continued. “You assume the next will be the same – but it might not.”
“It’s a bit like ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in terms of understanding their danger, compared to more famous ones like Vesuvius,” she says of the underwater volcanoes, which are hardly monitored.
The team, who are working 12-hour shifts on the expensive project, are hoping to develop an understanding of what kind of seismic unrest could indicate an imminent eruption, so people in affected areas can be warned in good time.
They’re looking at Santorini as well as Kolombo, the other major volcano in this area, some 7km north-east.
Though the last blast at Santorini was midway through the last century, a “period of unrest” occurred in 2012, after magma flowed into the volcanoes chambers, Prof Yeo told BBC News.
Part of their work is using robots to closely study deep hydrothermal vents which often form near volcanoes and release warm water.
It’s yet to be established whether volcanoes become more or less explosive when sea water in these vents mixes with magma.
“We are trying to map the hydrothermal system,” she said, explaining that they “have to look inside the earth”.
Prof Paraskevi Nomikou a member of Greece’s Civil Protection agency said the expedition will create data sets and geohazard maps for the government emergency group.
“This research is very important because it will inform local people how active the volcanoes are, and it will map the area that will be forbidden to access during an eruption,” she told the outlet.
Though neither Santorini or Kolombo are expected to erupt imminently, it’s thought to only be a matter of time.