Descend Into the Abyss

You are about to travel to the most unexplored place on Earth — and it is not on another planet. It is right here, beneath the waves. More than 80 percent of the ocean remains unmapped and unexplored, and the deepest parts are more alien than anything science fiction has imagined.

The Mariana Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam, plunges to a depth of 10,984 meters (36,037 feet) at a point called the Challenger Deep. To put that in perspective, if you placed Mount Everest at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, its peak would still be more than a mile underwater. The pressure down there is over 1,000 times the atmospheric pressure at the surface — enough to crush a submarine like a soda can.

Yet even here, in total darkness under unimaginable pressure, life finds a way. Ghostly fish, translucent shrimp, and bizarre creatures that create their own light inhabit these depths. Let us descend into the abyss and meet them.