The thick sedimentary sequence (2–12 km [6500–39,400 ft]) underlying the abyssal floors (3–4 km [9800–13,100 ft]) of the Bering Sea Basin is shallowly (360 m [1181 ft]) underlain by large (2 km [6500 ft] in diameter, 200 m [656 ft] thick) deposits of concentrated methane hydrate. Mound-shaped bodies of hydrate are displayed on seismic reflection records as velocity-amplitude anomaly (VAMP) structures imaged as velocity pull-ups overlying push-downs. The VAMPs are numerous (hundreds to thousands) and occur across an area of approximately 250,000 km² (96,525 mi²).

The abundance of VAMP structures is conjectured to be a consequence of high rates of basinwide planktonic productivity; of preservation of organic matter; biosiliceous sedimentation; of silica diagenesis; and of high heat flow; and deposition of a thick (700–1000 m [2296–3281 ft]), upper section of perhaps latest Miocene but mostly glacial-age (early Pliocene and Quaternary) turbidite beds and diatom ooze. Stacking of this upper Cenozoic sequence of water-rich beds heated underlying diatomaceous deposits of Miocene and older age and enhanced the generation of thermogenic methane and the diagenetic conversion of the opal A of porous diatom beds to the denser and contractionally fractured opal-cristobalite tridymite phase of porcellaneous shale. Silica transformation expelled large volumes of interstitial and silica-bound water that, with methane, ascended through the shale via chimneys of fracture pathways to enter the porous (60%) upper Cenozoic section of diatom ooze and turbidite beds. Ascending methane entered the hydrate stability field at approximately 360 m (1180 ft), above which concentrated deposits of methane hydrate formed as either pore-filling accumulations or more massive lenses.

The deposition of high-velocity methane hydrate above a multitude of chimney structures transporting low-velocity, gas-charged fluids toward the sea floor is posited to account for the widespread recording of VAMP structures in the Bering Sea Basin.