Diamantina Fracture Zone Diamantina Fracture Zone The Diamantina Fracture Zone is an area of the south-eastern Indian Ocean seafloor. It has a range of ridges and trenches. It lies to the south of the mideastern Indian Ocean features of the Wharton Basin and Perth Basin, and to the south west of the Naturaliste Plateau. Being parallel to the Southeast Indian Ridge, Diamantina Fracture Zone is not a real fracture zone in the sense of plate tectonics, but rather an escarpment, separating two oceanic plateaus. In fact its extension to the west is called Diamantina Escarpment. This is the southern border of the Broken
Tonga Trench Tonga Trench The Tonga Trench is an oceanic trench located in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is the deepest trench of the Southern Hemisphere and the second deepest on Earth. The fastest plate tectonic velocity on Earth occurs as the Pacific Plate is being subducted westward in the trench. When the Apollo 13 mission was aborted in 1970 following an explosion in an oxygen tank, the radioisotope thermoelectric generator broke up in the atmosphere and the heat source plunged in or near the Tonga Trench. Atmospheric and oceanic monitoring indicate no release of nuclear fuel has occurred. The deepest point