This short online article, from the mantleplumes.org website, reviews the evidence for a thermal plume-related cause of the large shallow region in the western Pacific Ocean containing the Darwin Rise and Superswell regions. The authors point out that the heat flow of this region is not anomalous compared to comparable-age oceanic crust elsewhere, and on this basis, suggest that a plume origin is not required to explain the shallow oceanic depths in these areas.
