Mariana Trench And Its Mystery

Marinas trench is more than 2000 kilometers long and 70 kilometers wide near Pacific island of Guam. It is a subducting oceanic plate going under the continental plate and this is just a small part of ring of fire where there are numerous undersea volcanoes .

The spread of ocean floor at the bottom in Pacific zone is very smooth. The pressure is about 7 tons per square inch ,water temperature very cold at just above freezing point at about 4 degree centigrade. Pictures and videos shot by submersibles have shown lots of marine snow falling down from upper regions of the ocean .

It was surprising to find many deep sea creatures even at that depth and pressure where sun light has never reached for billions of years. Though it was thought that some man made junk would have made its way to the bottom , it was confirmed by the latest find of plastic on the ocean floor. Eerie acoustic sound was recorded at the bottom and is still not clear as to what was creating that deep sound. It would be sounds of whales or something else. Since the trench is about 11 kilometers deep it should be between two high steep cliffs that occasionally rumble and rock falls or land slides are common.

The silt at the bottom is accumulation of millions of years of organic matter which is gooie and many meters deep and once it is disturbed by the thrusters of the submersible it swiftly envelopes the craft and takes a long time to settle down. Very dark and forbidding environment to say the least.

Most of what is down there is a lot of mud and organic ooze which is a mix of literally everything which falls through the water column,,, and what eats that. Considering the cold temperatures and the very high pressure only some things can live there, in total darkness. Oxygen levels are not high, and with all the organic debris and decomposition, the water cannot support a large population of biota which is not clearly made for this sort of place.

Because it is an ocean trench, there will be landslides and earthquakes. The fracture in the crust likely causes seeps of methane and sulfur gasses, which are food for chemosynthetic bacteria. All in all, it is rather like a very dark, and cold sewage treatment plant.

Well, the trench is there because an oceanic plate is being subducted, so you’d expect to find all the stuff that’s on top of an oceanic plate, all smashed together as it gets scraped off against the other side of the trench. Below that mess, you’d expect to find the basalt of the oceanic plate.

The mystery is still unveiled and scientist and researchers are trying hard to reveal the mystery but maybe they need several years to achieve that.