AbstractIn the Okinawa Trough, a number of mud diapirs were observed by the seismic datasets from several different cruises. In this paper, based on the seismic profiles, we separated three different types of mud diapirs according to their configuration. All the mud diapirs are associated with free gas or gas hydrates, indicating that the mud diapirs could sever good migration pathways for free gas migrating upwards. Mud diapirs are distributed in the middle and south of the Okinawa Trough. Most of them are located to the south of the Miyako Fault zone. The triggering mechanisms were discussed in a large scale, which suggests the mud diapirs might be triggered by the collision between the Eurasian Plate and the northward subducting Philippine Luzon arc. The distribution of mud diapirs was mainly controlled by the compression during the Late Miocene and the Miyako Fault zone. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.