What Would a Trip to the Mariana

Well, today you’re gonna have this opportunity! 

Now, how good are you at holding your breath? Not that good? Well, not to worry. Hop on board of my submersible craft and join me in the voyage to the depths! Ready? Let’s dive! Right now, just below the surface, you see that life is thriving here. Fish and marine animals abound, and — hey there! — swimmers are waving at us. But we won’t be staying here for long. BUH, bye! At 65 ft, there’s a whole new world opening before your eyes: shallow coral reefs are standing beautifully not far from the shore. And hey, there are people here again! It’s scuba divers this time, though. Water pressure isn’t kind to divers without special equipment. 130 ft is the depth where we say goodbye even to recreational scuba divers — it’s the maximum allowed for them. Take care, guys! 200 ft — and here’s the first orca! These whales inhabit the relatively shallow waters of almost every sea and ocean in the world. Did you know they’re the apex predators, by the way? It means they have no natural enemies and no one can take them down. At 230 ft, we meet whale sharks — the largest known fish species, weighing up to 60 tons. And they’re also quite long-livers: well yeah I guess their livers are long for that, but actually it’s about their life expectancy: they can live about 130 years. Now look outside: if you see a scuba diver, it’s a real pro, because at 330 ft they’ll have to be very cautious not to get decompression sickness. It occurs if you rise too quickly to the surface. And if you’re lucky, you can also see a giant Pacific octopus — it dwells in cool waters starting this deep and going down as far as 6,600 ft. And now we’re entering the dark part of the ocean: at 490 ft, just 1% of the light from the surface reaches us. All the rest is absorbed by water. Everything that’s deeper will get darker and darker still. Oh, look! At 660 ft, there’s a giant oar fish circling our submersible. These creatures are believed to be the source of all sea serpent sightings, and a lot of alliteration! Sometimes they swim up to the surface and freak out sailors and swimmers. No wonder: these fish can reach 36 ft in length — enough to scare the heck out of me, for example. Okay, now we’re at 980 ft and… wait, what’s that huge and gangling thing out there? Oh, I get it, it’s a Japanese spider crab! Why a spider, you ask? Well, just look at those legs and the answer will come to you without further prompts. By the way, there’s almost nothing more to them than legs: the body of such a crab is normally just 1.5 ft across. Going deeper now, and at 1,640 ft you’re going to see the last of the blue whales — no, not really the last of them, I mean, that’s the deepest they can swim. They don’t really need to dive that deep for food, which they have in abundance in shallower waters, but they still can. I guess it’s just for the sake of showing how awesome they are. After all, they’re the largest creatures in the history of Earth — both in the sea and on land! Shh… You hear this? These are the sounds fin whales are making to talk to their friends many miles away. They can do this thanks to the SOFA R channel, or Deep Sea Channel, that generally starts at 1,970 ft, but can vary in depth. It’s a layer of water where the speed of sound is at its minimum, and sound waves can go thousands of miles before disappearing. At the depth of 2,723 ft we have reached the point where the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, would not even show its tip on the surface if it were put underwater. Hey, let’s try that! Now we’re entering the really interesting part of the ocean, where no sunlight reaches us, and strange creatures dwell. One of those is the giant squid — yes, that legendary type. It inhabits the depths of 2,950 ft. Just imagine the creature with eyes the size of Frisbees! Sperm whales hunt down these beasts, but they certainly can fight back. What a sight it would be to see such an encounter! And that’s where pitch darkness finally falls on us. The Midnight Zone. The pressure here is so huge that, if you somehow end up being here without a submersible, you’ll simply be crushed in a couple of seconds. And that without seeing a thing, too. Not the best of prospects. Anyway, at 3,600 ft, there’s West Meta — one of the deepest ocean volcanoes in the world. Its last eruption was in 2009, and it was even filmed by a remotely operated vehicle! 4,200 ft down below, and we see the ferocious great white sharks — these ultimate predators feel great at such a depth. Their eyesight is rather poor, and they navigate by scent, so they don’t really need sunlight to hunt down their prey. “I don’t see you, but I’ll still eat you.” Brr. Also, the leatherback turtles, the largest turtles in the world, dive at the same depth. I wonder if they do it to tease the great whites? See those huge nets? That’s because we’re now at the depth of 4,900 ft where the “catch-all” fishing method is used. The nets are here to be dragged along the ocean floor, catching everything unfortunate enough to be caught. I’ll let you decide how detrimental this is to the ocean life here.