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.
2021-06-22 19:00:00 - Natural World Facts
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