Deepest Areas Ocean Floor

It is the deepest oceanic trench on earth.

Deepest areas ocean floor.

Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. Oceanic trenches in the ocean are long but narrow topographic depressions on the sea floor the deepest parts of the ocean floor. The challenger deep in the mariana trench is the deepest known point in earth s oceans. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time.

It is almost seven miles deep or about 35 000 feet. The maximum known depth is 10 984 metres 36 037 ft 25 metres 82 ft 6 825 miles at the southern end of a. The most recent descent was made in 2012 by a manned deep submergence vehicle the deepsea challenger. Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet.

The pacific ocean has around 50 000km of convergent plate margins and most of the deepest point located around this place. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter produced in the photic zone for this reason scientists once assumed that life would be sparse. The oceans deepest area is the mariana trench also called the marianas trench which is in the western part of the pacific ocean. The deep sea or deep layer is the lowest layer in the ocean existing below the thermocline and above the seabed at a depth of 1000 fathoms 1800 m or more.

It is crescent shaped and measures about 2 550 km 1 580 mi in length and 69 km 43 mi in width. According to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the trench is almost 5 times wider than it is deep. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. The trench is 1 554 miles long and 44 miles wide or 120 times larger than the grand canyon.

The rest of the ocean floor varies in depth. Altogether the deep sea floor makes up about 71 of the world s oceans with shallow waters such as continental shelves making up 29. In 2010 the united states center for coastal ocean mapping measured the depth of the challenger deep at 10 994 meters 36 070 feet below sea level with an estimated vertical accuracy of 40 meters. In most of the world the ocean floor is very deep averaging 3 790 meters 12 430 ft in depth.

The tonga trench is the second deepest site in the ocean floor at 35 702 feet below the level of the sea floor. The deepest part of the ocean floor is the marianas trench near the philippines in the pacific ocean. Nearly half of the world s sea floors are over 3 000 meters 9 800 ft deep.