Molucca Sea Plate

The earthquakes were caused by the continuing distortion of the Molucca Sea Plate.

The sea is a very seismically active area due to the Molucca Sea Plate.

The Molucca Sea Plate, the tectonic plate named after the sea, goes further north.

The region is regularly rocked by large earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as the Molucca Sea Plate is being consumed in both directions.

Both Sangihe and Halmahera are exposed to the surface while the Molucca Sea plate is completely subsumed below these two microplates.

This arc began erupting at around 11 Ma on Obi as a result of subduction of the Molucca Sea plate.

The existence of Halmahera as a tectonic plate separate from the Molucca Sea Plate is not yet entirely agreed upon by paleogeologists.

The Molucca Sea Plate has been subsumed by tectonic microplates, the Halmahera Plate and the Sangihe Plate.

The southern boundary of the Molucca Sea Plate is also the boundary of the Philippine Sea Plate and the Australian Plate, and is moving northwards.

The tectonic relationship of the Sangihe Plate, Halmahera Plate, and the Molucca Sea Plate, plus the volcanic Halmahera Arc and the Sangihe Arc is complex.

One of these, the Molucca Sea Plate, is currently being subducted beneath both the Philippine Sea Plate and the Sangihe Microplate, causing it to have an inverted U-shape seismic zone.

The Halmahera lavas also record a temporal change in the chemistry of the mantle component that resulted from induced convection above the falling Molucca Sea Plate drawing compositionally distinct peridotite into the mantle wedge.

Arc formation from the Middle Miocene onwards was due to the east-directed subduction of the Molucca Sea Plate beneath the Philippine Sea Plate as it arrived at the Eurasian margin.

Some see Halmahera as an eastern slab of the Molucca Sea Plate, just as they regard Sangihe as a western slab of the Molucca Sea Plate.

Since the Sangihe Plate and the Halmahera Plate are in continuity with the Molucca Sea Plate, this implies all three slabs are moving northward in mantle with the Australian Plate.

Within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone, the Molucca Sea Plate has been totally subsumed by the arc-arc collision of the Halmahera Arc and the Sangihe Arc of eastern Indonesia.

Both the Halmahera subduction system to the east, and the Sangihe subduction system to the west, have subducted oceanic lithosphere of the Molucca Sea plate, which has been completely consumed, with the Sangihe arc now over-riding the Halmahera forearc.

The Molucca Sea Plate (also Molucca Sea Microplate) was theorised to be a small tectonic plate carrying northern Sulawesi, the Molucca Sea and a portion of the Banda Sea in a region littered with numerous small plates.

More recent scientific studies suggest the Molucca Sea Plate has been totally subsumed by the Halmahera Plate and the Sangihe Plate, so that no portion of the Molucca Sea Plate remains exposed to the Earth's surface.