The Mayotte seismic sequence that started on 10 May 2018, with a main shock of magnitude Mw 5.9 on May 15, followed by a major offshore volcanic activity, raises several questions of seismovolcanic hazards in the Comoros region. The unexpected size and duration of the crisis is an opportunity to reassess the distribution and magnitude of the seismicity near Mayotte Island, but also regionally. We present a comprehensive seismicity catalogue of the region including the Mozambique Channel, the Mozambique coast and Madagascar, based partly on previously published data in the region and partly on unpublished data from local catalogues for the Comoros and Madagascar. Our catalogue extends from 1900 onward with a completeness of magnitude 5.5 until 1980s and decreasing only recently to 4.5 after 2010. It comprises the events of magnitude Mlv ≥3.5 for the seismic sequence of Mayotte from May 2018 to October 2020 as the crisis is still ongoing. Present knowledge of the seismicity, largely partial in distribution and magnitude before 1980, makes the seismic sequence of 2018-2020 an exceptional and unprecedented seismo-volcanic event in the region. We discuss the distribution of seismicity in time and space within the context of the south eastward propagation of the East African rift system towards Madagascar.

Summary The brutal onset of seismicity offshore Mayotte island North of the Mozambique Channel, Indian Ocean, that occurred in May 2018 caught the population, authorities, and scientific community off guard. Around 20 potentially felt earthquakes were recorded in the first 5 days, up to magnitude Mw 5.9. The scientific community had little pre-existing knowledge of the seismic activity in the region due to poor seismic network coverage. During 2018 and 2019, the MAYOBS/REVOSIMA seismology group was progressively built between four French research institutions to improve instrumentation and data sets to monitor what we know now as an on-going exceptional sub-marine basaltic eruption. After the addition of 3 medium-band stations on Mayotte island and 1 on Grande Glorieuse island in early 2019, the data recovered from the Ocean Bottom Seismometers were regularly processed by the group to improve the location of the earthquakes detected daily by the land network. We first built a new local 1D velocity model and established specific data processing procedures. The local 1.66 low VP/VS ratio we estimated is compatible with a volcanic island context. We manually picked about 125,000 P and S phases on land and sea bottom stations to locate more than 5,000 events between February 2019 and May 2020. The earthquakes outline two separate seismic clusters offshore that we named Proximal and Distal. The Proximal cluster, located 10km offshore Mayotte eastern coastlines, is 20 to 50 km deep and has a cylindrical shape. The Distal cluster start 5 km to the east of the Proximal cluster and extends below Mayotte's new volcanic edifice, from 50 km up to 25 km depth. The two clusters appear seismically separated, however our dataset is insufficient to firmly demonstrate this.

From 10 May 2018 to 1 November 2022 (time of writing), an unprecedented seismic activity is observed east of Mayotte Island (France), related to the largest submarine eruption ever recorded with offshore geophysical studies. Using signals from regional and local seismic stations, we build a comprehensive catalog of the local seismicity for the first ten months of the sequence. This catalog includes a total of 2874 events of magnitude (Mlv) ranging from 2.4 to 6.0, with 77% of them relocated using a double difference location procedure. The hypocentral locations over this period are highly dependent on the small seismic network available. Therefore we compare the locations of later events using a similar network and those estimated from a local ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) network installed since March 2019. Based on the time space evolution and characteristics of the seismicity, five distinct phases can be identified, corresponding to the successive activation of two deep seismic swarms, related to the lithospheric-scale magma ascent up to the seafloor, along with progressive deepening of the seismicity interpreted as decompression of a 40 km deep reservoir.