It’s often said that we know more about the Moon’s surface than we do about the deep sea – which starts at a depth of 1,800 metres and reaches down to almost 11,000m within the Mariana Trench. That belief is completely wrong, apparently, said Sandrine Ceurstemont in the New Scientist – and is elegantly dismantled in episode one of the riveting The Deep-Sea Podcast, by host Dr Alan Jamieson, a world leader in the biological exploration of the ocean below 6,000m. Jamieson and his co-host Dr Thomas Linley have attracted an impressive roster of interviewees, including authors and artists as well as scientists. In one episode, they talk to
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Armatus Oceanic
IT IS hard to imagine what the deep sea actually looks like. There is practically no light in this lowest layer of the ocean, which starts at a depth of 1800 metres and reaches almost 11,000 metres at its deepest-known point within the Mariana trench in the western Pacific Ocean. Hence nobody has actually seen the deep sea close up, meaning we typically rely on colourful depth maps created with acoustic techniques to visualise it.
Furthermore, it is hard to make sense of the sheer scale of what lies underwater. The Pacific Ocean covers almost half the planet, for example. Due to its intangible nature, inaccurate analogies are often used to describe the deep sea.