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
Oceanic trench Oceanic trench Oceanic trenches are topographic depressions of the sea floor, relatively narrow in width, but very long. These oceanographic features are the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Oceanic trenches are a distinctive morphological feature of convergent plate boundaries, along which lithospheric plates move towards each other at rates that vary from a few millimeters to over ten centimeters per year. A trench marks the position at which the flexed, subducting slab begins to descend beneath another lithospheric slab. Trenches are generally parallel to a volcanic island arc, and about from a volcanic arc. Oceanic trenches typically extend below