How are guyots and seamounts formed?
The North Pacific Ocean has curved rows of mountainous islands on the landward sides of ocean trenches. Here, an ocean plate and its sediment plunged in the Earths mantle. Some of the rocks melted deep down beneath the surface. The light ingredients then rose through the mantles dense rock burning holes through the crust and bobbing up to build a volcanic island arc. Volcanic islands drift away from a hot spot sink as their weight depresses the plate they rest on. Then waves chop off their tops. They become the flat-capped submarine peaks of guyots. Seamounts are islands that break the surface. Some of these submarine volcanoes rise thousands of feet and still do not emerge.
