How Are Seafloor Formed?

As plates converge, one plate may move under the other causing earthquakes, forming volcanoes, or creating deep ocean trenches

. Where plates diverge from each other, molten magma flows upward between the plates, forming mid-ocean ridges, underwater volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, and new ocean floor crust.

How is the seafloor created?

Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. When oceanic plates diverge, tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. ... At a spreading center, basaltic magma rises up the fractures and cools on the ocean floor to form new seabed.

How is the seafloor created and destroyed?

This process of new oceanic crust creation and movement away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge is called "seafloor spreading". ... So new oceanic crust is made in the "middle" of oceans along Mid Ocean Ridges, and it's destroyed where oceanic crust meets another tectonic boundary and subducts.