Mariana Trench

Hi guys! Today I’m going to talk about the deepest place on earth- the Mariana Trench.

The Mariana Trench is 1,500 miles (2,550 kilometers) long and 43 miles (69 kilometers) wide. The deepest point in the Mariana Trench is Challenger Deep. It is so deep that if you took Mount Everest and dropped it in, it’d still be at least a mile underwater.

The Mariana Trench was formed by tectonic plate collision in a process called subduction. When two plates collide, one goes down below the other and into the mantle, creating a trench.

Challenger Deep has only ever been explored by three brave souls. The first was in 1960 when Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy completed the feat in a submarine. The most recent time was in 2012, when James Cameron solo dived in a self-designed submarine. Unfortunately, during the first expedition, they were only able to stay there for twenty minutes and couldn’t get good photos due to the dust they kicked up. James Cameron was able to stay under for three hours and got plenty of amazing photos and footage.

One of the most amazing things about the Mariana Trench is that there are actually organisms that can survive down there! In 2015, NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer found a tiny, almost translucent fish. There are also certain kinds of bacteria that are able to survive the harsh conditions. Research has shown that the bacteria might be surviving off of oil.

In 2009, the Mariana Trench was designated as a Marine National Monument as a move to protect the amazing ecosystem. Sadly, plastic waste has encroached on one of the most hard to reach places on earth. Even the most protected places are still affected by pollution.

I hope you enjoyed learning about the Mariana Trench. If you have any posts you’d like to see done, just comment down below or fill out a contact form and I’ll put it on my list. See you next week!

Photo credits: Featured Image: Scientific American; Trench diagram: WHOI