The Mediterranean Sea as you have never seen it : results from systematic swath mapping during the last decade.

Since about 10 years systematic swath mapping of the Mediterranean sea has been undertaken by several european oceanographic Institutions, particularly from France, Italy, Spain, Greece and the Netherlands. Under the sponsorship of CIESM, IFREMER and Geosciences-Azur (CNRS) the bathymetric data have been compiled at a 500 meter grid to construct two maps of the Western and Eastern Mediteranean basin at a 1/ 2000 000 scale. - Most of the northern western Mediterranean, including the Rhone margin and its deep terrigenous cone, and the tectonically active and magmatic Thyrrenian sea, are now well documented; the seismically active steep northern African margin is currently under investigation. - In Eastern Mediterranean, 80 per cent of the deep (below 800 meters) domain, including the Ionian and Levantine basins and the prominent Mediterranean ridge and Nile margin/deep sea fan, are now well imaged by swath bathymetric data. These precise morphologic data enligth the complex interplays between tectonic (including salt tectonic) sedimentary and fluid/mud expulsion mechanisms. They have also been the basis to organize several deep in situ studies, particularly of the numerous fluid releases whic characterize most of the areas. Parts of the shallower extensionnal, back arc type, Aegean, sea have also been surveyed, while the Calabrian Ridge, an accretionnary wedge similar to the Mediterranean ridge, which lies south-east of the Italian peninsula, has just been mapped by OGS-Trieste (summer 2005). The complex Mediterranean sea is probably one of the best surveyed oceanic spaces using swath mapping tools whose results are particularly significant to better image and understand the different processes which concurr to shape the sea floor of this progressively closing oceanic space.