The Deepest Place on Earth

The story

Where is the deepest place on our whole planet? Not the bottom of the deepest lake. Not the bottom of an ordinary sea. Far out in the Pacific Ocean, the sea floor bends down and down into a tremendous valley called the Mariana Trench, and in that trench lies a spot called the Challenger Deep. It goes down almost eleven kilometres. Numbers like that slide off the mind, so try this: drop Mount Everest into the Challenger Deep, and its peak would still lie under more than a kilometre of water.

For most of history, no one could visit, because the deep sea guards itself. All that water above presses down, and at the bottom of the trench the squeeze is immense, more than a thousand times the press of the air around you now, enough to crumple an ordinary submarine like a paper cup. It is utterly dark down there, and cold.

Two people went anyway. In January of 1960, an explorer named Jacques Piccard and a navy officer named Don Walsh climbed into a very special craft called the Trieste. Most of the Trieste was a giant float, like an underwater balloon. The part that mattered hung beneath it: a small, round cabin of thick steel, a bubble strong enough to push back against the crushing deep, with just enough room for two men and a tiny window.

Down they sank, hour after hour. Sunlight faded to blue, then to black. Nearly ten thousand metres down, a sharp CRACK shuddered through the craft. They could not tell at first what had caused it. They switched off their humming instruments and listened. The bubble was holding. They looked at each other, and they went ON. Later they spotted the cause: a cracked window pane in the entrance tube, a part of the craft used only at the surface. After almost five hours of falling through darkness, the Trieste came to rest at last, hanging just above the soft, pale floor of the Challenger Deep. Two human beings had reached the very bottom of the world.

And then, through that little window, came the real treasure. Peering out into the lights of the craft, Jacques Piccard reported a marvellous sight: something flat and alive, down where life seemed nearly impossible. No photograph was taken, and scientists have puzzled over the report ever since. Perhaps it was a flatfish, perhaps a soft, pale sea cucumber, perhaps tired eyes in the gloom. Later expeditions have confirmed the wonderful heart of it: even the deepest place on Earth is not empty. Strange fish glide in the trench's upper reaches, and on its floor live ghostly sea cucumbers and creatures we are still discovering.

The Trieste rose safely home, and here is a thought to grow on: only a few dozen people have ever reached the Challenger Deep, and most of the deep ocean has never been seen by anyone at all. The maps of the deep sea are still mostly blank.

Somebody is going to fill those maps. Somebody patient, brave and careful, who is probably a child somewhere at this very moment.