It passes close to the south shore of Crete and ends near the island of Rhodes just offshore Anatolia.

The "partial" view hypothesizes that the western leg of the HT, Ionian Sea east to eastern Crete, exhibits the line of subduction and therefore is an oceanic trench.

[6] The initial line of the subduction, traditionally believed to be located in the trench, and to be at the foot of the margin of the overriding plate, has a direction, the strike.

These definitions appear to solve the contradiction of the Hellenic Trench not going far enough around the arc to account for the eastern side.

The radius has been calculated at 400 kilometres (250 mi),[13] which places the center at about 38°30′00″N 25°30′00″E / 38.50000°N 25.50000°E / 38.50000; 25.50000, in the middle of the north Aegean Sea.

[14] The parallel trend of the volcanic arc at a radius of 200 kilometres (120 mi) seems to give some approximate verification.

A plate-compressive velocity of the Hellenic Arc ought to have been in evidence, given the precision with which GPS can measure geological movement.

[15] The expected closure of the Hellenic Arc on the north Aegean turned out to be a vigorous motion in the opposite direction, a theoretical paradox requiring additional geological theory to explain.

A number of mapping techniques have been applied to research the arc zone, such as seafloor mapping, reflection seismology, and application of the Global Positioning System, which can detect changes of position in millimeters; i.e., geologic movement, good for measuring geologic velocities.

The work done so far indicates that the appearance of symmetry is an illusion based on the shape of the forearc; that is, on the raised arc of the margin of the overriding plate.

As far as the major parameters are concerned: fault type, dip, depth, velocity, seismicity, etc., the subduction zone in the trench is asymmetric, which some consider a unique distinction.

The zone begins near the Gulf of Corinth and trends ESE in an arc approximating a straight line.

[22] The general geologic answer is that the subduction due to the compression of Africa against Eurasia is a different movement from the southward thrusting of the Aegean Plate.

Such a view could not be verified because the trench was full of obscuring sediment, and because the arc-shaped Mediterranean Ridge seemed part of the subduction complex.

If the strike of the subducting plate is in the Hellenic Trench (often termed "the classical view"), then it is far distant from the accretionary ridge supposed to have been accreted there.

Perhaps the bottom of the trench did not connect with (was decoupled from) the subducting plate at all but was a "pull apart" fault basin in the forearc (the raised chain of highlands and islands), or perhaps it was part of a wrinkle in the foredeep produced by compressional motion of the Aegean Plate against the "backstop" of the Mediterranean Ridge.

[f] Historical geology offers reasons for hypothesizing that, in its earlier development, there was one trench traversing what is now the Aegean, and that it contained the subduction zone and the edge of the Eurasian Continent.

If one imagines all the geologic changes brought about by extension to be reversed, then all the islands descend from an ancestral Hellenic Arc traversing the North Aegean.

[27] Each forearc was a complex of folds, or "nappes," raised by compression (or "shortening of the crust"), which had a tendency to fall over, creating tilted layers exposed later in highlands.

Mainland Greece thus consists geologically of strips, or isopic zones ("same facies"), or "tectono-stratigraphic units" of distinct rock trending from NW to SE.

The former reverse faults were converted to normal, and many new extensional lineaments (tectonic features), such as pull-apart basins, appeared.

A bathymetric view of the current configuration suggests that an angle was generated on the west by rotating the subduction zone away from the original strike of the EMNT as a baseline in the CW direction about a vertex, or pole, on the coast of Apulia, Italy.

The subducting plate broke along the KTF and also along the Plato–Strabo trench area, forming a parallelogram that slipped outward between the two strike-slip cross-faults.

It is generally sgreed that the fault represents the offsetting of the Hellenic Arc from the Hellenides north of the Gulf of Corinth due to Aegean Plate extension.

Prior to the offset, the subduction zone of the Adriatic, or Apulian, Plate under the edge of the Balkans was continuous with the Hellenic Trench.

As it turns out, the Mediterranean Ridge (MR), also arcuate, curves a little more to the north to intersect the KFZ a little further out than the HT.

The location of the border between Aegean Plate and Ionian Sea Plain is again deferred until more definitive evidence can be obtained.

The Hellenic Trench from the intersection with the KFZ to south of Crete consists of a line of deep-sea basins named after surface features and divided from each other by gravity rises.

The trench and the arc to the north of it, including a strip of southern Anatolia, are home to some of the larger marine mammals, some of which are endangered species.

The ACCOBAMS's Scientific Committee conducts investigations, manages data, and makes recommendations to member countries.