by David Shukman environment & science correspondent, BBC News 
the environment of the Caribbean island nation of Tonga is very geologically active an expedition is always under way in the South Pacific, to examine one of the most seismically active fault lines in the world.Researchers plan of the Tonga trench - a deep feature to study, where the Pacific tectonic plate under the Indo Australian plate is forced.
The island nation of Tonga is regularly by Quake - most recently a 6.4 magnitude before offshore quake hit last month.
The research will last about a month expedition.
An unusual zone on the ocean floor, where submarine volcanoes in the error be taken are in the focus of the study.
Scientists want a better understanding of the impact of the u boat mountains of the likelihood of earthquakes.
The volcanoes are located on the 4 000 km long Louisville Ridge and either as a brake on the Pacific plate - or reinforce the consequences of the earthquake.
The area where they are drawn in the bottom of the sea, suffers less trembling as other routes to relatively speaking the fault line.
The study - funded UK natural environment Research Council (Nerc) - is conducting surveys and 3D models to develop while seven transits of the region.
One of the lead scientists on the expedition, Professor Tony Watts Oxford University, told BBC News:
"We want to know, whether subducted seamounts keep to earthquakes or whether they cause earthquake."
"This is important to find out, so that we can learn which controls earthquake and better reviews, it can result in the future."
Subduction zones such as the Tonga trench can trigger tsunamis - as was the case prior to Japan last month and Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004.
A recent study of an earthquake showed in Peru in the year 2001 that underwater can have held mountains in the quake for 40 seconds before bursting.
A study of Nankaido earthquake in Japan in 1946 shown in successfully a seamount that apparently limited the scale of the break and the tsunami hazard and drawn 10 km deep - had been.
According to Professor Watts structure of the Tonga trench is more data to the depth required to understand the forces at work.
"We need to know whether the seamounts are more or less intact, as in the gap are made or damaged or were beheaded."
"If we, that it find a connection between seamounts and earthquakes then get shots of the ocean floor us in a much better position for future earthquakes and tsunamis are."
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