A tectonic collision in plain sight
The island of Seram sits within one of the most tectonically complex areas on Earth. It is a part of the Banda Arc, a curve of islands formed by the collision of the northward-moving Australian continental plate with a series of microplates in the Banda Sea. North of the island, the seafloor buckles into the Seram Trough, which reaches depths of over 3,500 meters. This trough is not a subduction trench where one plate slides smoothly under another. Instead, it is a fold-and-thrust belt, a zone where the Australian continental crust is being compressed, buckled, and bulldozed upwards.
This intense compression is the direct cause of Seram's mountainous landscape. The ongoing collision forces the island to rise, lifting ancient seafloor and deep crustal rocks high above sea level. This process has created peaks like Mount Binaiya, which stands at 3,027 meters (9,931 feet). The entire island is an active orogen, or mountain range. The process began in the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene and continues today, marked by frequent seismic activity in the surrounding region.