What is a seamount?

Oct. 3, 2023

Recently, two Indian scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and their team have discovered an active submarine volcano (Crater Seamount) in the Andaman Sea.

About Seamount:

It is an underwater mountain formed through volcanic activity.
These are recognised as hotspots for marine life. Like volcanoes on land, seamounts can be active, extinct, or dormant volcanoes.
These are formed near mid-ocean ridges, where the earth’s tectonic plates are moving apart, allowing molten rock to rise to the seafloor.
The planet’s two most-studied mid-ocean ridges are the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise.
Some seamounts have also been found near intraplate hotspots—regions of heavy volcanic activity within a plate—and oceanic island chains with volcanic and seismic activity called island arcs.
These are formed when molten rock comes up from below the tectonic plate.
Significance of seamounts
- They provide information about the mantle’s composition and how tectonic plates evolve.
- These are helpful in understanding their influence on how water circulates and absorbs heat and carbon dioxide.
- They are good places for life because they can cause localised ocean upwelling, the process by which nutrient-rich water from deep within the ocean moves up to the surface.

Key facts about Andaman Sea

It is a marginal sea in the northeastern Indian Ocean.
It is bound
- To the north, by the Irrawaddy River delta of Myanmar(Burma)
- To the east are peninsular Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia.
- To the south is the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Strait of Malacca, and to the west are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which constitute a union territory of India.