Are There Really Millions of Volcanoes Hidden Beneath the Ocean?

[wolram]

http://environment.newscientist.com...new-volcanoes-revealed-beneath-the-waves.html



The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.

 

[wolram]

http://environment.newscientist.com...-new-type-of-volcano-fires-imaginations-.html

New type of volcano found


A new type of volcano has been discovered in the western Pacific Ocean. The findings may reduce the strength of a popular theory of “hotspot” volcanism, researchers say.

Naoto Hirano at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and colleagues have discovered miniature volcanoes – between 0.005 cubic kilometres and 1 km3 in size – near the underwater Japan Trench. These volcanoes, dubbed “petit spot” because of their size, cannot be accounted for by any of the conventional theories of volcanism.

 

[billiards]

Old news. I believe it has something to do with crust flexing, and local pockets of magma from the asthenosphere forming and rising up the cracks. Those that use the existence of these "petit spots" to discount plume theory are quite clearly crackpots, just because petit spots aren't related to plumes doesn't mean that Hawaii or Iceland cannot be. Interestingly, the article says there are less of these petit spots around Hawaii and Iceland - perhaps that has something to do with the dominance of plume related hot spots in these regions?