Measuring the ocean’s deepest points

Abigail Brewer 4 years ago 2 min read

MADRID (EUROPA PRESS). New studies of the sea floor show, for the first time, the deepest points in the Indian and Southern Oceans.

As part of the Five Deeps Expedition team, scientists from Caladan Oceanic LLC and the British Geological Survey have studied the deepest regions of the Java Trenches and the South Sandwich in detail.

Data published in the Geoscience Data Journal shows the deepest point in the Indian Ocean at 7,187 meters, inside the Java Trench, and the deepest point in the Southern Ocean at 7,432 meters, inside the Southern Sandwich Trench.

Prior to the Five Depths Voyage (FDE), the deepest parts of some ocean were relatively well known, such as the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, but others had multiple “depths” as different locations struggled to be the deepest point at it. Private surroundings.

To date, there has been a lack of high-resolution data available for the Indian and Southern Oceans, and there has been considerable doubt about the exact location of the deepest point, not to mention accurate depth measurements, the British Geological Service said in a statement. ..

The Southern Sandwich Trench is located just north of Antarctica, and straddles the Southern and Atlantic Oceans. It was not thoroughly explored prior to the FDE mission and is the only subzero abyssal area (more than six thousand meters) in the world. The FDE study has produced the most accurate Southern Sandwich Trench mapping to date, using a modern, multi-beam sonar system.

The new study showed that the deepest point in the trench is the meteor abyss at a depth of 8265 meters, but it is located within the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The recently named Factorian Abyss, which is located at the southern end of the trench, is already in the Austral Ocean, at a depth of 7,432 meters.

The Java Trench, in the eastern Indian Ocean, is more than four thousand kilometers long. In April 2019, FDE made its first manned descent to the absolute bottom of the crater (7,187 m).

Among the deepest abyss that were previously illustrated, it is worth noting that the Challenger Abyss is in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, at a depth of 10 thousand 924 meters below sea level; Brownson Abyss in the Puerto Rico Trench, with 8378, for the Atlantic Ocean; And Molley Hole, west of Svalbard, at 5,551 meters, for the Arctic.