Oceanic trench the level of the surrounding oceanic floor. The greatest ocean depth measured is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of below sea level. Oceanic lithosphere moves into trenches at a global rate of about 3 km/yr. There are approximately of convergent plate margins, mostly around the Pacific Ocean—the reason for the reference “Pacific-type” margin—but they are also in the eastern Indian Ocean, with relatively short convergent margin segments in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea. Globally, there are over 50 major ocean trenches covering an area of 1.9 million km or about 0.5%
Oceanic trench to dispose of sediment. An evolution in trench morphology can be expected, as oceans close and continents converge. While the ocean is wide, the trench may be far from continental sources of sediment and so may be deep. As continents approach each other, the trench can fill with continental sediments and become shallower. A simple way to approximate when the transition from subduction to collision has occurred is when the plate boundary previously marked by a trench is filled enough to rise above sea level. Accretionary prisms grow in two ways: by frontal accretion, whereby sediments are scraped off the