Mariana Trench

The deepest place on Earth

The Mariana Trench is the deepest place in the ocean — 11 km! If you put Everest there, there would still be 2 km of water above its peak. It's pitch dark, the water is 1 °C, and the pressure is like 100 elephants standing on one finger. Yet even there, creatures live — transparent fish and giant amoebas. More people have been to the Moon than to the bottom of the trench!

The Mariana Trench is a 2,550 km long trough in the western Pacific near the Mariana Islands; Challenger Deep is 10,935 m (measured in 2021). It is a subduction zone where the Pacific Plate dives under the Philippine Plate. At the bottom the pressure is 1,086 bar (1,071 times sea level), the temperature 1–4 °C, and there is no light. Life: xenophyophores (10 cm single-celled organisms), amphipods, snailfish down to 8,000 m. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descended in the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, James Cameron solo in 2012, and Victor Vescovo several times since 2019. Sadly, plastic has been found on the bottom. Since 2009 the trench has been a US national monument.

Fun facts

• Fewer people have reached the bottom of the trench than have been to the Moon!
• The pressure at the bottom is 1,000 atmospheres — enough to crush a steel ball.
• Even at 11 km deep, a plastic bag was found.