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Tamu Massif is a seamount in the northwest Pacific Ocean, sitting atop a triple junction of mid-ocean ridges. Tamu Massif is located in the Shatsky Rise about east of Japan. The massif covers an area of about . Its summit is about below the surface of the ocean, and its base extends to about deep. It is about tall.
William Sager, a marine geology from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston, began studying Tamu Massif around 1993 at the Texas A&M College of Geosciences. In September 2013, Sager and his team concluded that Tamu Massif is "the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth". Other igneous features on the planet are larger, such as the Ontong Java Plateau, but it has not yet been determined if they are indeed just one volcano or rather complexes of several volcanoes.
Using magnetic lineations, researchers discovered that there are three bathymetric highs and a low ridge, a topography that would imply three separate volcanoes; but the Mantle plume model indicates a single massive volcano. Based on multichannel seismic profiles and rock samples from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) core sites, Tamu Massif appears to be a single massive volcano made of lava flows that emanated from the volcano centre and formed its shield shape; however, the profiles have large gaps in them, leaving open the possibility that it may represent the activity of more than one volcano. A subsequent study in 2016 found that the massif was likely generated by a single volcano. In 2015, researchers found that the volcano's structure bore patterns of magnetic striping on either side, indicating that the volcano is likely a hybrid of a mid-ocean ridge and a shield volcano. Geologic data also indicated that Tamu Massif formed at the triple junction mid-ocean ridges, which was a highly unusual occurrence.
A study found that the Moho line, the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle, extends more than beneath the base of Tamu Massif, meaning that the volcano is unlikely to ever erupt again, since magma is presumably unable to penetrate a barrier that thick.
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