“The intense pressures in the deep ocean make it an extremely difficult environment to explore.” Although you don't notice it, the pressure of the air pushing down on your body at sea level is about 15 pounds per square inch. If you went up into space, above the Earth's atmosphere, the pressure would decrease to zero.
The water is heavier than air, and therefore puts more pressure on us and objects in the sea. The deeper you go into the ocean, the more water there is above you, so there is more pressure. Our human bodies - specifically our lungs - are only designed to manage one atmosphere's worth of pressure (like we do on land).
Thousands have climbed Mount Everest, and a handful of people have walked on the moon. But reaching the lowest part of the ocean? Only three people have ever done that, and one was a U.S. Navy submariner.
The pressure from the water would push in on the person's body, causing any space that's filled with air to collapse. (The air would be compressed.) So, the lungs would collapse. At the same time, the pressure from the water would push water into the mouth, filling the lungs back up again with water instead of air.
While the recommended maximum depth for conventional scuba diving is 130 feet, technical divers may work in the range of 170 feet to 350 feet, sometimes even deeper.
Last year an expedition to the Mariana Trench made history by conducting the deepest crewed dive ever completed as it descended 10,927 metres into the Challenger Deep.
Light in the ocean decreases with depth, with minimal light penetrating between 200-1,000 meters (656-3,280 feet) and depths below 1,000 meters receiving no light from the surface.
Travel to 2,000 meters below the ocean's surface, and the pressure will be approximately 200 atmospheres. That's a lot of pressure! Most organisms with gas-filled spaces (like humans) would be crushed by the pressures that other deep-sea life experience.
Therefore, the deep ocean (below about 200 meters depth) is cold, with an average temperature of only 4°C (39°F). Cold water is also more dense, and as a result heavier, than warm water. Colder water sinks below the warm water at the surface, which contributes to the coldness of the deep ocean.
Overall, the ocean is pretty deep; however, its bottom is not flat or uniform, which means water depths in the ocean also vary. The deepest place in the ocean measures 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) and is found in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, at a place called Challenger Deep.
Too much pressure would collapse those spaces, crushing us. Animals adapted to deep-ocean life don't have air pockets in their bodies. Some marine animals travel between deep ocean and the surface.
The depths from 1,000-4,000 meters (3,300 - 13,100 feet) comprise the bathypelagic zone. Due to its constant darkness, this zone is also called the midnight zone. The only light at this depth and lower comes from the bioluminescence of the animals themselves.
At least 15 percent of the ocean is covered by sea ice some part of the year. Ocean water freezes just like freshwater, but at lower temperatures. Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit but seawater freezes at about 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit , because of the salt in it.
Why are oceans so deep? The extreme depth of the Mariana Trench and other oceanic trenches is caused by subduction. This is where on the boundary of two converging tectonic plates, one descends down into Earth's mantle, creating a deep trough.
The submersibles in this section are capable of depths between 2,000 and 11,000 meters – full ocean depth. They exist to break down the final barrier of human exploration on Earth, and to further mankind's understanding of the ocean.
Generally, the ocean is much deeper than the sea even if some seas can be almost as deep as big oceans. To give you a few examples, the depth of the Channel is 174m, the one of the North Sea is 700m and for the Black Sea it is 2,212m.
In the lead are Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) that can dive from the ocean's surface down to 2,992m (9,816ft) thanks to adaptations that help them conserve oxygen and survive extreme pressure .
Why is the ocean salty? Rivers discharge mineral-rich water to the oceans. Satellite view of La Plata River discharge to the Atlantic Ocean. One way minerals and salts are deposited into the oceans is from outflow from rivers, which drain the landscape, thus causing the oceans to be salty.
From 1,000 meters below the surface, all the way to the sea floor, no sunlight penetrates the darkness; and because photosynthesis can't take place, there are no plants, either.
The maximum depth reached by anyone in a single breath is 702 feet (213.9 metres) and this record was set in 2007 by Herbert Nitsch. He also holds the record for the deepest dive without oxygen – reaching a depth of 831 feet (253.2 metres) but he sustained a brain injury as he was ascending.
Despite its size and impact on the lives of every organism on Earth, the ocean remains a mystery. More than 80 percent of the ocean has never been mapped, explored, or even seen by humans. A far greater percentage of the surfaces of the moon and the planet Mars has been mapped and studied than of our own ocean floor.
The deepest part of the ocean is called the Challenger Deep and is located beneath the western Pacific Ocean in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which runs several hundred kilometers southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam. Challenger Deep is approximately 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) deep.
Answer and Explanation: The first humans to explore the midnight zone personally, rather than dredging samples from those depths, were Otis Barton and William Beebe.