The Philippine Trench (also Philippine Deep, Mindanao Trench, and Mindanao Deep) is a submarine trench to the east of the Philippines. It has a length of approximately 1,320 km and a width of about 30 km from the centre of the Philippine island of Luzon trending southeast to the northern Maluku island of Halmahera in Indonesia. Its deepest point, the Galathea Depth, has a depth of 10,540 metres (5763 fathoms or 34,580 feet). Before 1951, when an expedition of HMS Challenger measured a depth of 10,863 metres in the Mariana Trench, the Galathea Depth was the greatest known ocean depth.[1]. Now, it's the deepest point in the country and the 3rd in the world.
Immediately to the north of the Philippine Trench is the East Luzon Trench. They are separated, with their continuity interrupted and displaced, by Benham Plateau on the Philippine Sea Plate. [2]
The Philippine Trench is the result of a collision of tectonic plates. The Philippine Sea Plate is subducting under the Philippine Mobile Belt at the rate of about 16 cm per year.
[edit] References
- ^ Bruun, A. F. , et al. (1956). The Galathea Deep Sea Expedition, 1950–52.. London: Allen and Unwin. p. 35.
- ^ Deschamps and Lallemand (2003) in Intra-Oceanic Subduction Systems: Tectonic and Magmatic Processes ISBN 1862391475 p165
