Volcanic Sea

Europe's largest undersea volcano could disintegrate and unleash a tsunami that would engulf southern Italy "at any time,” a prominent vulcanologist warned in an interview published Monday.

The Marsili volcano, which is bursting with magma, has "fragile walls" that could collapse, Enzo Boschi told the leading daily Corriere della Sera.

"It could even happen tomorrow," said Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).

"Our latest research shows that the volcano is not structurally solid, its walls are fragile, the magma chamber is of sizable dimensions," he said. "All that tells us that the volcano is active and could begin erupting at any time."

The event would result in "a strong tsunami that could strike the coasts of Campania, Calabria and Sicily," Boschi said.

The undersea Marsili, 9,800 feet tall and located some 90 miles southwest of Naples, has not erupted since the start of recorded history. It is 44 miles long and 19 miles wide, and its crater is about a quarter mile below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea.