DIARY OF OPERATIONS

• 2006-11-27 Mobilization of equipment and personnel on R/V Urania docked in the Naples harbour, berth 22.
• 2006-11-28 At 10:00 localtime R/V Urania sailed from Napoli, heading SSE to Stromboli, where it arrived 22:00. A CTD cast was performed at a water depth of 1500 m on the northern flanks of the volcano, and immediately input on the PDS2000 software for multibeam operations.The GEOPRO team prepared the 10 OBS for deployment, whilst IAMC and ISMAR teams prepared the air-gun arrays and compressors.
• 2006-11-29 From midnight to 06:00 multibeam mapping was performed in order to decide the OBS deployment sites, basing also upon available ISMAR data. From 06:00 to 12:00 the 10 OBS were deployed on the NE, S and SW flanks of the volcano, at maximum depths and distance of 1500 m and 2 NM, respectively. At 15:30 the seismic arrays were deployed and at 16:30 seismic operations started for quality control and tuning, shooting the guns at 140-190 bars by using the full delivery of 2500 L/min by the diesel and electrical compressors. At 20:00 contacts with the INGV teams in Strombol reported that the entire land seismic network showed signals from the seismic shots when ship came closer than 1-1.5 km from shore. At 22:00 the diesel compressor showed very bad performance on the High Pressure 4th stage with oil spills and automatic equipment turnoff. Therefore we were forced to put it out of operations until repair.
• 2006-11-30 At 05:00 the outer gun of the starboard array was found to be defective and was taken off the array. After two hours of work with three guns, and test of the array in Air-Gun mode, at 10:00 the array was recovered, the defective gun was recovered and the spare one was installed. At 11:45 the array was redeployed and normal operations were restored. At 13:00 a circle at 500 m from shore started. At 19:00 problems electrical compressor were found. The pressure regulator was bypassed being defective. Multibeam acquisition continues during the interruption of seismic refraction acquisition covering water depths up to 1200 m. Shooting restarted 23:00.

• 2006-12-01 Starboard string was recovered. Multibeam acquisition continues during the interruption of seismic refraction acquisition covering water depths up to 1500 m.

• 2006-12-02 End shooting 05:43. Recovery OBS. At 21:00 CTD cast was performed on the SW flanks.

• 2006-12-03 CTD data were input on the PDS2000 software and we started a Multibeam acquisition following circles around the island down to a depth of about 1900 m. At 07:00 the acquisition was stopped to permit the landing of some members of the personal aboard. At 10:00 the acquisition restarted following circles around the island.

• 2006-12-04 At the 8:00 we changed the area to investigate the 'Sciara del Fuoco' nearshore till a depth of 15 m . At 11:00 we acquired six Multibeam calibration lines using as a target a seamount in order to calibrate heave, roll and pitch parameters. At 14:37 Multibeam acquisition restarted following circular routes around the island investigating till a depth of about 2200 m.

• 2006-12-05 At 03:00 data acquisition was stopped and ship started transit to Naples, doching at 18:00
• 2006-12-06 Demob in Naples