The northwest slope of the Chatham Rise lies within the broad transfer zone between westward-dipping Hikurangi margin subduction and the oblique-slip, dextral, Alpine Fault. The slope forms the southeastern flank of the southern Hikurangi Trough and, tectonically, it is characterised by widely distributed extensional faulting referred to as the North Mernoo Fault Zone. This paper presents some of the results of a study in progress of newly acquired seismic reflection data and seabed cores from the region. This new data includes high-resolution, single-channel airgun and 3.5 kHz profiles obtained on 5 R/V Rapuhia research surveys since 1988. These profiles have been combined with previous data obtained by DSIR, Glomar Challenger, and several oil companies. Biostratigraphy of piston cores from various seismic sequences provides a time framework in which to place the structural interpretation.