Davidson Seamount is an enigmatic volcanic feature of intraplate origins estimated to have formed 12-16 million years ago atop older, oceanic crust. Until 1964, about 2000 seamounts had been discovered, several hundred, surveyed Atlantic) was perhaps the first identified seamount and in 1938, the term “seamount” was first officially given by the US Board of Geographic Names to the Davidson Seamount (Brewin et al., 2007). Lower resolution images of Davidson Seamount are included in MBARI Mapping Team .

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Along the California coast, the process that created Davidson Seamount — and other nearby seamounts with names like Pioneer, Guide, Gumdrop, San Marcos, San Juan and Rodriguez — is also uncommon. The World's Largest Ocean Canyon - Richard Hammond's Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean - BBC One - Duration: 1:41. It’s about 25 miles long, and it rises about a mile and a half from the ocean floor. Davidson Seamount is enormous.

Volcanic in origin, Davidson Seamount was formed 12-16 million years ago atop a fossil spreading center, which produced a unique pattern of northeast trending ridges on the seamount. Seamount is an underwater mountain formed by volcanic activity. A map of a seamount in the Arctic Ocean created by NOAA's Office of Coast Survey by gathering data with a multibeam echo sounder. Even so, its summit is almost a mile below the ocean surface.
Davidson Seamount, located 120 km southwest of Monterey, CA, USA, is an example of a relatively undisturbed and pristine seamount habitat. The aggregation occurred in a shimmering, hot vent almost 10,000 feet deep just south of the Davidson Seamount. The mountain formed between about 10 million and 16 million years ago, when molten rock bubbled up through a split between portions of the ocean floor. Davidson is the best explored and well-known seamount in California waters and is already known to house more than 230 species, including 25 species of deep-water corals – some of which are bamboo corals over 200 years old. The seamount is 12.2 ± 0.4 million years old and formed about 8 million years after the underlying mid-ocean ridge was abandoned (Davis et al., 2002).

Davidson and Guide Seamounts formed above a fossil spreading center and Davidson is intersected at its southwest end by a fossil transform fault, the Morro Fracture Zone (Clague et al., 2009, Davis et al., 2002, Davis et al., 2010). Similar in formation to other central California seamounts, Davidson Seamount has a distinctive northeast-to-southwest orientation (Fig.

Formation of these complex, northeast-trending seamounts offshore central California, including Davidson Seamount to the south, is incompatible with a hot spot model or formation as near-mid-ocean ridge seamounts.