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Natural World Facts #Wildlife

Mariana Trench | In Pursuit of the Abyss

The Mariana Trench sits like a crescent-shaped dent in the floor of the Pacific. A 2,550 km long, 69 km wide fracture that plummets down into a pure black void of the Hadal Zone.

At the bottom, it hosts the deepest known location on Earth. The Challenger Deep, 11,033 metres or 36,200 feet beneath the waves. The trench itself is but one part of a global network of deep scars that cut across the ocean floor. Features that formed from a process called subduction.


In the case of the Mariana Trench, the western edge of the Pacific Plate was thrust beneath the smaller Mariana Plate to the west, creating the deep fracture. Molten material then rose through volcanoes near the trench, building the nearby Mariana Islands.


00:00 - Introduction

01:18 - Chapter 1: Gates of the Underworld - How the Trench Formed

02:41 - Chapter 1: Gates of the Underworld - An 'Impossible' Frontier

03:40 - Chapter 1: Gates of the Underworld - The HMS Challenger

04:11 - Chapter 2: In Pursuit of the Abyss - The Bathyscape Trieste, 1960

05:51 - Chapter 2: In Pursuit of the Abyss - The Deepsea Challenge, 2012

06:38 - Chapter 3: Discoveries in the Dark - The Kaiko Mission

07:56 - Chapter 3: Discoveries in the Dark - The Hadal Amphipod

09:00 - Chapter 3: Discoveries in the Dark - Abyssal Sea Cucumbers

09:45 - Chapter 3: Discoveries in the Dark - The Mariana Snailfish

10:17 - Chapter 3: Discoveries in the Dark - Denizens of the Abyss

11:05 - Conclusion

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