Rockall part of the deeply eroded Rockall Igneous Centre that was formed as part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province, approximately 55 million years ago, when the ancient continent of Laurasia was split apart by plate tectonics. Greenland and Europe separated and the northeast Atlantic Ocean was formed between them, eventually leaving Rockall as an isolated islet. The RV "Celtic Explorer" surveyed the Rockall Bank in 2003. The Irish Light Vessel "Granuaile" (the same name as the steamer on the RIA 1896 botany survey) was chartered by the Geological Survey of Ireland, on behalf of the Department of Communications, Marine and
Nankai Trough with the subducting young, hot Philippine Sea tectonic plate. At the targeted site, the geothermal gradient is about four times steeper than elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Reaching temperatures of approximately 130 °C in other areas would require collecting cores from approximately 4 kilometers below the seafloor, rather than 1.2 kilometers as planned. The Nankai Trough is the near-surface extension of a zone of active seismicity that dips beneath SW Japan. The rupture zone has been subdivided into five areas with respect to seismic modelling (Mitsui et al., 2004). These five subdivisions show interesting differences in earthquake behavior: frequency of