The
Japan Trench is an
oceanic trenchThe oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They are also the deepest parts of the ocean floor....
, a part of the
Pacific Ring of FireThe Pacific Ring of Fire is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements...
, in the floor of the northern
Pacific OceanThe Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Tepre Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and...
off northeast
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. It extends from the
Kuril IslandsThe Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, is a volcanic archipelago that stretches approximately northeast from Hokkaidō, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean...
to the Bonin Islands and is at its deepest. It is an extension of the
Kuril-Kamchatka TrenchThe Kuril-Kamchatka Trench or Kuril Trench is an oceanic trench with a maximum depth of 10,542 metres...
to the north and the
Izu-Ogasawara TrenchThe , also known as Izu-Bonin Trench is an oceanic trench in the western Pacific Ocean. It stretches from Japan to the northernmost section of Mariana Trench. The Izu-Ogasawara Trench is an extension of the Japan Trench. Here, the Pacific Plate is being subducted beneath the Philippine Sea Plate,...
to its south. This trench is created when the oceanic
Pacific plateThe Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean.The north-eastern side is a divergent boundary with the Explorer Plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Gorda Plate forming respectively the Explorer Ridge, the Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Gorda Ridge...
subducts beneath the continental
Eurasian plateThe Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate which includes most of the continent of Eurasia , with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent, and the area east of the Chersky Range in East Siberia...
. The subduction process, together with the friction created 'drags' the plates downwards, causing a deep-sea trench to be formed. The Japan Trench is one of the causes of the tsunamis and earthquakes in
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
On 11 August 1989 the Shinkai 6500 three-person submersible descended to .) while exploring the Japan Trench.
In October 2008, a UK-Japan team discovered a shoal of fish,
Pseudoliparis amblystomopsisThe hadal snailfish, Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis is a species of snailfish, described by Anatoly Petrovich Andriashev in 1955.In October 2008, a team of researchers from the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo's Ocean Research Institute discovered a shoal of P....
at a depth of in the trench, these are believed to be the deepest living fish ever recorded.
See also
- Oceanic trench
The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They are also the deepest parts of the ocean floor....
- Pacific Ring of Fire
The Pacific Ring of Fire is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements...
- Northeastern Japan Arc
Northeastern Japan Arc also Northeastern Honshū Arc, is an island arc on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The arc runs north to south along the Tohoku region of Honshū, Japan. It is the result of the subduction of the Pacific Plate underneath the North American Plate at the Japan Trench...
- Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc