An expedition · 0 — 10,935 m

Into the
Abyss

Ninety-five percent of the ocean has never been seen by human eyes. Hold your breath. We're going down.

Descend

The last wilderness on Earth.

We have better maps of Mars than of our own sea floor. Below a thousand metres, no sunlight survives, the pressure would crush a submarine, and life makes its own light.

95%Unexplored
1,086Bar at the bottom
76%Of deep life glows
0 — 200 mEpipelagic

Sunlight zone

Where light still reaches, plankton turn sunshine into half the oxygen you breathe. Everything below depends on what falls from here.

PhytoplanktonSea turtlesCoral reefs
200 — 1,000 mMesopelagic

Twilight zone

A blue dusk that never ends. Every night, billions of animals rise to feed and sink again by dawn: the largest migration on the planet.

LanternfishHatchetfishSiphonophores
1,000 — 4,000 mBathypelagic

Midnight zone

Total darkness. Light here is a language: lures, warnings, invisibility cloaks and love letters written in blue.

AnglerfishVampire squidGulper eel
4,000 — 6,000 mAbyssopelagic

The Abyss

Near-freezing, crushing and silent. Vast plains of soft ooze where a single fallen whale feeds a community for fifty years.

Sea pigsTripod fishDumbo octopus
6,000 — 10,935 mHadalpelagic

Hadal trenches

Named for Hades. The Challenger Deep: more people have walked on the Moon than have been here.

SnailfishAmphipodsXenophyophores