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How are fracture zones different from transform faults?

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World map highlighting major features of the ocean basins, including trenches, ridges, basins, and plateaus labeled throughout the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. Continents are shown with shaded terrain, and prominent undersea features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Mariana Trench, and Kerguelen Plateau are marked across the map. — ocean basin Major features of the ocean basins.

While the terms are often used in relation to one another, fracture zones and transform faults are distinct geological features within an ocean basin.

A transform fault is a seismically active boundary where two tectonic plates slide horizontally past each other. These faults occur specifically in the segments between offset spreading centres or where they connect spreading centres to subduction zones. Because they represent active plate boundaries, they are the sites of frequent earthquakes.123

In contrast, a submarine fracture zone is a broader, long-lived linear feature that extends beyond the active transform segment. The inactive portions of a fracture zone—found on the flanks of oceanic ridges—are essentially "scars" on the seafloor created by the past movement of transform faults. Unlike transform faults, these inactive sections do not experience differential plate motion or seismic activity because the seafloor on both sides of the fracture belongs to the same lithospheric plate.32