Santorini Volcano examined clues for the next major explosion

Sastorini's SASTER CLIFFS top is a world -renowned millions of tourism industry. Below is the fixing risk of an almighty explosion.

A huge ancient eruption created the dreamy Greek island, leaving a huge crater and edge in the form of a horse shoe.

Scientists are now investigating for the first time how dangerous the next big can be.

BBC News spent a day aboard the British Royal Research Ship Discovery while looking for clues.

Just weeks earlier, nearly half of the 11,000 Santorini residents fled for safety when the island closed in a series of earthquakes.

It was a rude reminder that under the idyllic white villages, full of gyros restaurants, hot tubs in the rents of Airbnb and vineyards of rich volcanic soil, two tectonic plates are ground into the earth's crust.

Prof. Isobel Yeo, an expert on highly dangerous underwater volcanoes with the British National Center for Oceanography, is the leading of the mission. About two -thirds of the world's volcanoes are underwater, but they are hardly observed.

“It's a bit like” out of sight, out of mind “in terms of understanding their danger than more known as Vesuvius,” she says on deck, as we observe two engineers who win a robot with the size of a car on the side of the ship.

This work, coming so soon after earthquakes, will help scientists understand what type of seismic excitement can show a volcanic eruption.

Santorini's last eruption was in 1950, but recently in 2012 there was a “period of excitement,” Isobel says. Magma entered the chambers of the volcanoes and the islands “swollen”.

“Underwater volcanoes are capable of really big, really destructive eruptions,” she says.

“We are sleepy in a feeling of false security if you are used to small eruptions and the volcano acting safely. You assume that the next one will be the same – but it may not not,” she says.

The eruption of Hung Tung in 2022 in the Pacific produces the largest underwater explosion ever registered and created tsunami in the Atlantic with shock waves in the UK. Some islands in Tonga, near the volcano, were so devastated that their people had never returned.

Under our feet on the ship, 300 m (984 feet) down, rushes hot openings. These cracks in the ground make the sea floor a bright orange world of protruding rocks and gas clouds.

“We know more about the surface of some planets than what is there,” says Isobel.

The robot descends to the seabed to collect liquids, gases and to tear off pieces of rock.

These openings are hydrothermal, which means that hot water is poured from cracks and often formed near volcanoes.

They are why isobel and 22 scientists from all over the world are on this ship for a month.

So far, no one has been able to cope if a volcano becomes more or less explosive when the seawater in these openings is mixed with magma.

“We are trying to map the hydrothermal system,” explains Isobel. It's not like making a land map. “We have to look inside the ground,” she says.

The discovery is investigating the Caldera of Santorini and sails to Colombo, the other major volcano in the area, about 7 km (4.3 miles) northeast of the island.

The two volcanoes are not expected to explode immediately, but it is only a matter of time.

The expedition will create Geohazard data and map sets for the Greece Civil Protection Agency, explains Prof. Paraskevi Nomiku, a member of the Government Group for Emergency, which met daily during the earthquake crisis.

She is from Santorini and has grown to hear about past earthquakes and eruptions from her grandfather. The volcano inspired her to become a geologist.

“This study is very important because it will inform the local people how active the volcanoes are and map the area that will be banned from accessing during eruption,” she says.

It will reveal which parts of Santorini's sea floor are the most dangerous, she adds.

These missions are incredibly expensive, so Isobel Crams in experiments night and day while scientists work in 12-hour shifts.

John Jamison, a professor at the Canada Memorial University in Newfoundland, shows the US volcanic rocks extracted from the openings.

“Don't raise this,” he warns. “It's full of arsenic.”

By pointing to another one that looks like a black and orange meringue with a gold dust, he explains: “This is a real mystery – we don't even know what was done.”

These rocks tell the history of liquid, temperature and material in the volcano. “It's a geological environment different for most others – it's really exciting,” he says.

But the beating heart of the mission is a dark container for shipping the deck, where four people stare at wall mounted screens.

Using a joystick who would not look from a place on a game console, two engineers control the underwater robot. Isobel and Paraske's commercial theories about what is in a fluid pool that the robot has found.

They have recorded very small earthquakes around the volcano caused by fluid moving through the system and causing fractures. Isobel plays us an audio record of fractures reflecting. It sounds that the bass in a nightclub is intensifying up and down.

They identify how the liquid moves through rocks by throbbing an electromagnetic field in the ground.

This creates a 3D card that shows how the hydrothermal system is connected to the magma chamber of the volcano, where an eruption is generated.

“We do science for people, not the science of scientists. We are here to make people feel safe,” Paraskevi says.

The recent Santorini earthquake crisis emphasized how much the residents of the island of seismic threats are exposed and how much they rely on tourism.

Returning to dry ground, photographer Eva Rend meets me in his favorite place for wedding shoots. When the so -called swarm of earthquakes struck in February, she left the island with her daughter.

“It was really scary as it was getting more intensive,” she says.

She is back now, but the business is more fun. “People have canceled reservations. I usually start shooting in April, but my first job is not in May,” Eva says.

On the main square of the city city of Santorini, the British-Canadian tourist Janet tells us that six of her group of 10 have canceled their vacation.

She believes that the right scientific information on the likelihood of earthquakes and volcanoes would help others feel more comfortable than the visit.

“I get Google's signals, get scientists' signals and helps me feel safe,” she said.

But Santorini will always be a dream destination. At Imerovigli, we see two people get on the curved roofs to get the perfect shot.

The couple – married in just 15 minutes – travels from Latvia and was not delayed by the underwater risks of the island.

“We actually wanted to get married from a volcano,” says Tom, his bride Christina next to him.

Additional reporting by Tom Ingham and Kevin Church, a climate and science team