Earth's "gold kitchen" lies deep beneath the seafloor. Island arcs, whose volcanoes form above subduction zones where one oceanic plate sinks beneath another, are often particularly rich in gold. The reasons for this have long been debated.

link to open access paper…

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03338-w

Dehydration of the Pacific Plate, subducting westward beneath the Australian Plate, drives arc magmatism and the formation of arc front volcanoes, most of which host active hydrothermal systems and also some massive sulfide mineralization with high grades of Au/Gold. Submersible dives have been conducted on 14 hydrothermally-active volcanoes of the Kermadec Arc with four of the volcanoes (29%) found to host sites with massive sulfide mineralization. Some of the best studied are Brothers and Clark Seamount.