At a glance, marine sediment might seem lifeless, just mud beneath the waves. But for James Fleming, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC, that mud holds entire worlds.

Rising from the deep seafloor south of mainland Japan, the Shichiyo Seamounts, a dive site of the JAMSTEC Shinkai expedition, are part of a chain of underwater volcanoes formed by tectonic activity along the Izu–Ogasawara Arc.

The Nankai Trough, stretching along the southeastern coast of Japan, is one of the most geologically active and biologically important deep-sea regions in the western Pacific.