Tonga Trench

[ tong-guh trench ]

noun

1. an oceanic trench in the South Pacific Ocean that lies as a nearly linear stretch from the northern end of the Kermadec Trench northward to an area south of Samoa, with rates of convergence along the two trenches’ subduction system being among the world’s fastest: the deepest trench in the Southern Hemisphere and the site of the Horizon Deep.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Tonga Trench¹

First recorded in 1910–15; named after the Tonga archipelago

Example Sentences

And Prof Jamieson will shortly be undertaking dives in Bakunawa that will investigate the world's second deepest location - Horizon Deep, in the Pacific's Tonga Trench, where the seafloor is 10,816m below the surface.

From BBC

Vescovo tells the writer when they meet aboard his ship en route to the Tonga Trench.

From Scientific American

The plutonium in these batteries isn't the same as the stuff that atomic weapons are made of, plutonium-239 - which is perhaps just as well, given that the Apollo battery ended up with the rest of the lunar module, deep in the waters of the Tonga Trench.

From BBC

The same expedition's survey produced stunning images last year of a line of underwater volcanoes being carried inexorably to the chasm of a subduction zone, the Tonga Trench.

From BBC

Subduction zones like the Tonga Trench can trigger tsunamis - as happened off Japan last month and off Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004.

From BBC