There are many holes in the ground in Cyprus which were once filled with massive pyrite deposited by black smokers on the seafloor. These holes are abandoned open-pit mines which now host lakes in the bottom.
These lakes may be astonishingly beautiful. Unfortunately, photos simply can not describe that deep red color adequately enough. This lake occupies the bottom of the Kampia mine.
Beautiful it may be but I would not go swimming there. I wonder what the pH of the water could be? It is definitely strongly acidic. I did not attempt to go down there. The slopes of the quarry do not seem to be very stable.
Almost all of the pyrite is gone, dug out and most likely used to make sulfuric acid which was used in the batteries of our cars. But I was still able to find some nice specimens.
Mathiatis mine is not as beautifully red but it was possible to safely visit the bottom of the quarry.
No massive pyrite is left for us to see. It costs money, you know. Cypriots are no idiots to leave it there. This was closest to massive pyrite I was able to find.
But I found some nice examples of a stockwork. This is basaltic seafloor below the pyritic lens through which hot and metal bearing water rose upward. Stockwork is a mixture of basalt with hydrothermal pyrite and quartz (lower right).
Nice reddish quartz crystals. Red color is probably caused by the hydrothermal alteration of a metal bearing sediment umber deposited between pillows.
A road down to the quarry is paved with slag.
Beautiful poppies growing near the rim of the mine.
Sulfide ore is called “massive” because it contains little else than pure pyrite. Here is an example of a large block of pyrite (pyrite as a rock) in a park behind the visitors center in the village of Troodos (far away from the mines described above).
I was just in Cyprus for a geology field school last month, and we visited Mathiatis mine. I will hopefully be posting a blog about my trip there soon, or at the very least some photos!
We saw some of the massive pyrite in Mathiatis, however we were looking closer at the rocks hosting the sulphides. Oh and the slag along the road, that was super neat!
Hi, Meagan. Nice to know you visited the place as well. I learned from my guidebook that the small amount of massive pyrite left is underwater currently.
A really interesting post. I’m just wondering about the third picture down. What’s the lilac coloursd “frothy” looking rock that your sample is resting on? I have a similar sample from a copper mine in Wales and have no idea what it is or how it’s formed! Thanks.
This is basalt and purple mineralis probably hematite.
Hi , I was wondering about the first picture . The Kambia mine .
I read that the mine was abandoned after the Turkish invation in the island , in 1974
but before that , the Kambia mine company was exporting some tons of copper and maybe gold from
there . Do you think is available to have any copper still there ? or maybe gold..?
Thank you
I am sure there is something to be found for a mineral collector. I remember I found a nice sample of massive pyrite. But I am not sure this is enough for re-opening the mine. I am really sceptical about that. Mining that type of ore is environmentally problematic. What was possible in Cyprus decades ago might not go so easily in modern EU with all kind of environmental regulations and omnipresent NIMBYism.