New Hebrides plate

[4][5] While most of it is submerged as the sea bottom of the North Fiji Basin, the island country of Vanuatu, with multiple arc volcanoes, is on the western edge of the plate.

It is bounded on the south-west by the Australian plate, which is subducting below it at the New Hebrides Trench.

The Vanuatu subduction zone is seismically active, producing many earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher.

At its south, convergence is being accommodated by rifting in the western stretch of the New Hebrides Trench, and transform faulting in the Hunter Ridge north of this stretch of the trench.

The transform faulting is more established in the Hunter fracture zone which continues as the southern border of the Conway Reef plate towards Fiji.