The Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain is a series of volcanoes and seamounts extending about 6,200 km across the Pacific Ocean. The chain has been produced by the movement of the ocean crust over the Hawaiʻi hotspot, an upwelling of hot rock from the Earth's mantle. As the oceanic crust moves the volcanoes farther away from their source of magma, their eruptions become less frequent and less powerful until they eventually cease to erupt altogether. At that point, erosion of the volcano and subsidence of the seafloor cause the volcano to gradually diminish. As the volcano sinks and erodes, it first becomes an atoll island and then an atoll. Further subsidence causes the volcano to sink below the sea surface, becoming a seamount and/or a guyot. This list documents the most significant volcanoes in the chain, ordered by distance from the hotspot; however, there are many others that have yet to be properly studied.