Life in the deep oceanic trenches
Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh took the bathyscaphe Trieste to 10,900 metres deep in the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. This was in 1960 and they are the only people to have reached such a depth. As they reached the bottom they were surprised to see a flatfish swimming by, which means that there is life at these huge depths.
Now the BBC has got a good article on the different types of life that live in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans. There are 37 oceanic trenches around the world and they are narrow canyons on the sea floor, beyond the abyss (3,000 – 6,000 metres), going down to around 11,000 metres.
Over the past few years, the Hadeep team at Oceanlab has been exploring these trenches using a remotely operated vehicle called the Hadal Lander. The life they have found doesn’t look as unusual as the creatures from around 1,000 metres deep. This may be because there is more food and organic matter that has sunk to the bottom of the trenches, compared with what fish would find in mid-water much shallower.
You can see some video of these creatures and a good article on the BBC’s website.
Tags: Wildlife