From previous investigations by Eldholm, Vogt and others, it is well known that there is a huge and active mud volcano in the southern Barents sea, northwest off Norway. It has been detected as a source of methane gas, fluid, heat and mud which are conveyed from great depth.
Within the framework of Polarstern cruise ARK XIX/3 on cruise leg b (26 June - 19 July 2003) this was a target for detailed measurements carried out with and without the French diving robot Victor.

Questions to which we contribute are: What temperature does submarine produced mud really have? and: How often do these events occur?

A set of narrow spaced temperature measurements (100 m apart, 3.5 m deep) give an answer to the first question: a maximum temperature of app. 26°C compared to a surroundung environment temperature of -1.8°C is an amazingly high value. This gives already an estimate to question no. two: this mud volcano is very active and the observed mud flow had only some days or weeks at most time for cooling.
Together with measurements, carried out with miniaturized temperature loggers of our French collegues from IFREMER, we get a good picture of temperature and activity distributon. Those measurements reached different sub-seafloor depths between 0.25 and 16 m.