Uncharted territory: Earth’s deepest point
Perhaps not on the bucket list of those with Thalassophobia…
Eleven thousand metres below sea level, the ‘Challenger deep’, owing its name to the H.M.S Challenger which detected its presence in the 19th century through sound waves, is by far the deepest point on Earth (The National Geographic 2012). It can be located at the Southern end of the ‘Marianas Trench’ in the Western Pacific Ocean, at the subduction zone between the Subducting Pacific plate and the overriding Philippine plate.
I’ve always been fascinated with the deep, ever since I visited the ‘Great Barrier Reef’ in 2014. I remember drifting through the water serenely, staring in awe at the resplendent coral just below me, which seemed to continue forever. Suddenly, however, I froze in my tracks when I reached a ‘drop off’. This is, for those who don’t know, essentially the point where the continental land ends abruptly and the deep sea begins.
Anyway, I was left staring into the abyss; an overwhelmingly vast expanse of blue nothingness. I could not see the bottom, or anything tangible for that matter. It was compellingly disorientating. A weird sensation. The best way I could describe it is… it was like being in underwater space.
Ever since that moment, the ‘not knowing’ what lurks below continues to be a curiosity which consumes me. So, of course, the ocean’s deepest point, the ‘Challenger Deep’, is an intrinsic source of interest for me, perhaps even more so when I learnt , not too many years ago, of the several successful expeditions which have made it over thirty-five thousand feet to the bottom.
With enormous pressures of eight tons per square inch, it is fairly safe to say that if anything went wrong at this depth then… well, it’s curtains. But despite these conditions and the inevitable complications they present in designing a submersible with the ability to withstand them, three voyages have so far reached the bottom.
The pioneers were Don Walsh and his accomplice Jacques Piccard in 1960, who descended in a vessel called the ‘Trieste’ which was designed by Piccard.
Their descent took all but five hours which, I can imagine, was characterised by eagle-eyed staring at indicators and an adrenaline-filled mindfulness of the possible perils that could, at any given moment, befall them. Five hours of hell, quite probably… to stay down there for just twenty minutes. It turns out, you can’t see a whole lot down there. Yes, the ‘Trieste’ had lights (there’s no sunlight seven miles below, in case you were wondering), but the main problem was the silt which the submersible had picked up the when landing on the surface. This, of course, made photos of any discernible character practically impossible.
The second, more recent expedition (see above) was made, solo, by James Cameron in March 2012. He, unlike his predecessors Don and Jacques, had the equipment for 3D imaging and sample collection of the microbial and sedimentary type. Cameron’s descent was significantly quicker than Don and Jacques’; taking just over two and a half hours, a journey which he documented. However, he was able to remain at the bottom for a number of hours, during which time he made some interesting discoveries….
Given the decidedly uninhabitable conditions, Cameron’s revelation that the seabed was almost completely lacking in ‘microfauna’ should come as no surprise. He did, however, explain to BBC News upon his return how he had “…found sixty eight new [bacterial] species” and “…some amphipods…” (BBC 2013).
Such expeditions represent revolutionary breakthroughs in human endeavour. There is, seemingly, no limit to what we are capable of. Some of the extraordinary micro-organismic findings of Cameron and, more recently still, Victor Vescovo in May 2019, may give clues to the origin of life on Earth, according to scientific researchers. In any case, given the rapid technological advancements we continue to see and the eery actuality that 80% of the ocean still remains unexplored, there are both the provisions for and scientific motivations supporting further odysseys into unknown…
