Oceanic crust, extending 5-10 kilometers (3-6 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor, is mostly composed of different types of basalts. Geologists often refer to the rocks of the oceanic crust as “sima.” Sima stands for silicate and magnesium, the most abundant minerals in oceanic crust. (Basalts are a sima rocks.) Oceanic crust is dense, almost 3 grams per cubic centimeter (1.7 ounces per cubic inch).
Oceanic crust is constantly formed at mid-ocean ridges, where tectonic plates are tearing apart from each other. As magma that wells up from these rifts in Earth’s surface cools, it becomes young oceanic crust. The age and density of oceanic crust increases with distance from mid-ocean ridges.
Just as oceanic crust is formed at mid-ocean ridges, it is destroyed in subduction zones. Subduction is the important geologic process in which a tectonic plate made of dense lithospheric material melts or falls below a plate made of less-dense lithosphere at a convergent plate boundary.
At convergent plate boundaries between continental and oceanic lithosphere, the dense oceanic lithosphere (including the crust) always subducts beneath the continental. In the northwestern United States, for example, the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate subducts beneath the continental North American plate. At convergent boundaries between two plates carrying oceanic lithosphere, the denser (usually the larger and deeper ocean basin) subducts. In the Japan Trench, the dense Pacific plate subducts beneath the less-dense Okhotsk plate.
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