It’s about 25 miles long, and it rises about a mile and a half from the ocean floor. BBC Recommended for you Davidson Seamount is enormous. The seamount is 12.2 ± 0.4 million years old and formed about 8 million years after the underlying mid-ocean ridge was abandoned (Davis et al., 2002). 2), The mountain formed between about 10 million and 16 million years ago, when molten rock bubbled up through a split between portions of the ocean floor. Seamount, large submarine volcanic mountain rising at least 1,000 m (3,300 feet) above the surrounding deep-sea floor; smaller submarine volcanoes are called sea knolls, and flat-topped seamounts are called guyots. A map of a seamount in the Arctic Ocean created by NOAA's Office of Coast Survey by gathering data with a multibeam echo sounder. Davidson Seamount is located 80 km off Big Sur, California, and rises from the 3500 m abyssal plain to 1254 m depth. Atlantic) was perhaps the first identified seamount and in 1938, the term “seamount” was first officially given by the US Board of Geographic Names to the Davidson Seamount (Brewin et al., 2007). Their existence is tied to the formation of the San Andreas Fault a few tens of millions of years ago. Volcanic in origin, Davidson Seamount was formed 12-16 million years ago atop a fossil spreading center, which produced a unique pattern of northeast trending ridges on the seamount. Davidson Seamount, located 120 km southwest of Monterey, CA, USA, is an example of a relatively undisturbed and pristine seamount habitat. Seamount is an underwater mountain formed by volcanic activity.

Even so, its summit is almost a mile below the ocean surface. Along the California coast, the process that created Davidson Seamount — and other nearby seamounts with names like Pioneer, Guide, Gumdrop, San Marcos, San Juan and Rodriguez — is also uncommon. Davidson and Guide Seamounts formed above a fossil spreading center and Davidson is intersected at its southwest end by a fossil transform fault, the Morro Fracture Zone (Clague et al., 2009, Davis et al., 2002, Davis et al., 2010). Seamounts - undersea mountains formed by volcanic activity - were once thought to be little more than hazards to submarine navigation. Similar in formation to other central California seamounts, Davidson Seamount has a distinctive northeast-to-southwest orientation (Fig.

Formation of these complex, northeast-trending seamounts offshore central California, including Davidson Seamount to the south, is incompatible with a hot spot model or formation as near-mid-ocean ridge seamounts. Until 1964, about 2000 seamounts had been discovered, several hundred, surveyed The aggregation occurred in a shimmering, hot vent almost 10,000 feet deep just south of the Davidson Seamount. Lower resolution images of Davidson Seamount are included in MBARI Mapping Team . Davidson is the best explored and well-known seamount in California waters and is already known to house more than 230 species, including 25 species of deep-water corals – some of which are bamboo corals over 200 years old. The World's Largest Ocean Canyon - Richard Hammond's Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean - BBC One - Duration: 1:41. Davidson Seamount is an enigmatic volcanic feature of intraplate origins estimated to have formed 12-16 million years ago atop older, oceanic crust.