The Moai Seamount is a

submarine volcano Submarine volcanoes are underwater vents or fissures in the Earth's surface from which magma can erupt. Many submarine volcanoes are located near areas of tectonic plate formation, known as mid-ocean ridges. The volcanoes at mid-ocean ridges ...

, the second most westerly in the Easter Seamount Chain or Sala y Gómez ridge. It is east of Pukao seamount and west of

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

. It rises over 2,500 metres from the ocean floor to within a few hundred metres of the sea surface. The Moai seamount is fairly young, having developed in the last few hundred thousand years as the

Nazca Plate The Nazca plate or Nasca plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic list of tectonic plates, tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru– ...

floats over the Easter hotspot. The Moai seamount was named after the

moai Moai or moʻai ( ; ; ) are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but h ...

statues of neighbouring Easter Island.

References

Submarine volcanoes Seamounts of the Pacific Ocean Hotspot volcanoes Pleistocene Volcanoes of Chile Volcanoes of Easter Island {{Chile-geo-stub

See also

References