Though it has not erupted in recorded history, volcanologists believe that Marsili is a relatively fragile-walled structure, made of low-density and unstable rocks,[2] fed by the underlying shallow magma chamber.

Volcanologists with the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) announced on March 29, 2010, that Marsili could erupt at any time, and might experience a catastrophic collapse that would suddenly release vast amounts of magma in an undersea eruption and landslide that could trigger destructive tsunamis on the Italian coast and nearby Mediterranean coastlines.

The volcano rises from a plateau of thin oceanic (or pseudo-oceanic) crust with a thickness of only 10 km, which forms its own sea basin.

Traces of volcanic collapse have been found on the sides of other submarine volcanoes, which may have resulted from tsunamis along the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy.

[9] Marsili has been studied since 2005 as a strategic project of the Italian National Research Council[10] by means of a sonar system and integrated monitoring networks for ocean observations.