Moai (seamount)

Moai
Orthographic projection centered on Easter Island
Height	>2,500 metres
Location
Location	Pacific Ocean, west of Easter Island
Geology
Type	Submarine volcano
Volcanic arc/chain	Sala y Gómez ridge
Age of rock	Pleistocene
Last eruption	>100,000 BCE

The Moai Seamount is a submarine volcano, the second most westerly in the Easter Seamount Chain or Sala y Gómez ridge. It is east of Pukao seamount and west of Easter Island. It rises over 2,500 metres from the ocean floor to within a few hundred metres of the sea surface.^[1] The Moai seamount is fairly young, having developed in the last few hundred thousand years as the Nazca Plate floats over the Easter hotspot.

The Moai seamount was named after the moai statues of neighbouring Easter Island.

See also

• Easter Island
• Sala y Gómez

References

1. ^ Haase, Karsten M.; Peter Stoffers and C. Dieter Garbe-Schönberg (October 1997). "The Petrogenetic Evolution of Lavas from Easter Island and Neighbouring Seamounts, Near-ridge Hotspot Volcanoes in the SE Pacific". Journal of Petrology 38 (06): 785–813. doi:10.1093/petrology/38.6.785. http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/petroj/online/Volume_38/Issue_06/html/ega038_gml.html. Retrieved 2010-03-16.