Bounty Trough

It runs East-West for a distance of some 800 kilometres (497 mi) to the deep ocean between the Chatham and Bounty Island groups.

[2] Much of The Bounty Trough lies at depths of 2,000–3,000 metres (6,562–9,843 ft), and it marks an indentation in the "coastline" of the largely submerged continent of Zealandia.

[4] The channel system is the remnant of a Cretaceous (failed) rift formed via ocean-floor spreading at the time when Zealandia separated from Antarctica[5] between 130 and 85 Mya.

In July 2012, the NIWA research ship RV Tangaroa mapped the area finding a structure of nine canyons ending in "a large deep apron-shaped sediment deposit in the Bounty Trough".

The survey could support petrochemical exploration, though, Roberts et al.[2] found evidence of "an extensive and effective petroleum system" to be "conjectural".