Ocean Floors

For my virtual field study I have decided to take you with me into the dark deep ocean floors. It is one of the world’s many wonders and one of the hardest places to reach. Why is it so hard to reach? You might wonder, well it reaches down 11,000 meters, the deeper you dive the colder the water becomes, it’s very dark and the deeper you go the more pressure you feel. So why would you want to go down there? We as humans are the most curious species and have discovered countless amounts of things throughout history. But the ocean floor is one of the beautiful gems that haven’t been discovered and we have just begun to look at. Lets go over some of the things that we have discovered, for many years people believed the sea was so deep nothing could live down at the bottom as this line from BBC says, 

“In a book published in 1859, the year Darwin published On the Origin of Species, Forbes wrote: “As we descend deeper and deeper in this region, its inhabitants become more and more modified, and fewer and fewer, indicating our approach towards an abyss where life is either extinguished, or exhibits but a few sparks to mark its lingering presence.” He was confident, but five years later Forbes’ ideas were blown out of the water”

They state that the deeper into the water we got the less animals there was which was soon to be proved completely wrong as BBC aslo says, 

“Between 1872 and 1876, the British ship HMS Challenger sailed for 127,653 km in a bid to catalogue the life in all the Earth’s oceans and seas. It was a journey into the unknown, just like the Apollo Moon landings in the 20th century. In total 4,700 new species of marine animals were discovered, including the first records of deep-sea organisms”

Over four thousand new species, that is crazy to think that a place we all believed to be empty had its own little world taking place. This discovery was taken back in the 1800s in which technology was nowhere near what it is in recent years which makes you wonder, what do these four thousand species look like, what do they eat, how do they survive all the way at the bottom. Well BBC also shows us,

“ The first challenge animals encounter as they move deeper is the complete darkness. Some deep-sea fishes, like the stout blacksmelt, have giant eyes to capture the faintest glimmers. Others have abandoned vision. The tripodfish, named for its elongated fins that allow it to perch on the sea floor, relies on touch and vibrations to sense its prey. Still others emit their own light by a process known as bioluminescence. These lights can be used as headlights, as in lanternfish, or to attract mates or prey”.

The animals down at this depth have adapted differently to the ones up above since they have no sunlight to feed on plants and are at extremely cold temperatures. They have to feed on other dead organisms which is crazy because this means that some have to die in order for everyone else to survive. It’s like Entering a whole different planet once you go down there. The animals that inhabit deep down are some of the scariest animals we have seen such as goblin sharks, and deep sea dragonfish. Although we may want to see a fish from all the way on the ocean floor it may be hard as the National Geographic lets us know, “Yet even though the deepest part of the ocean extends almost another 2 miles down to just shy of 11,000 meters, scientists suspect they are unlikely to ever find a fish that lives much deeper. That’s because the pressure down deep is so enormous that fish may be chemically unable to withstand its destabilizing effects on proteins below about 8,200 meters” Even though we may never see one the deep ocean life is a very interesting one and one we have just begun to discover. Plenty more discoveries are to be made and I highly recommend you check some articles on deep sea life as it is amazing to observe this all.

Deep Sea Dragonfish

-Goblin Shark