"The Deep: What Lies Beneath Us"

The Last Frontier- The Ocean Floor

The OCEAN covers 71% of earth. Just the Atlantic Ocean itself is 20% of the Earth’s surface and covers 41 million square miles. 50% of the known creatures on Earth are in the Atlantic but 90% live deep in the photoic zone (where there is sun) which is only 2% of the ocean’s mass. Algae is only found here and importantly produces 70% of the World’s oxygen and 98% of our biomass. Plankton is 49% of this and it alone provides 50% of our oxygen!

Unfortunately, people can only freedive to 100’ before their bodily functions start to shut down (yes, a few divers can go down 300’) but this is literally “scratching the surface” of where is life. At 1,000’ only blue light is let in, sunlight never gets in.

At 2500’, it is permanently black with the pressure at 75 times the surface pressure (sea water is 840 denser than air so that 10’ of water is equivalent to the pressure at 10,000’ in the air). At 99’, everything gets pressured to squeeze it to ¼ its original size! Does any life survive there? Yes, 4,700 species at depths below 2500’ with 600 species living at 13,000-35,797’, still with an estimated 30 million undiscovered species. At this depth there are the greatest amount of animals with 600 species that live without light and 85% of life living below 3000’.

Levels of the Ocean: The Epipelagic level is from the surface to 300’. The Mesopelagic level is 300’-1000’ where sharks and dolphins live. The Bathypelagic level is 1,000’-10,000’ where whales travel. The Abyssopelagic level is 10,000’-28,000’ and Hadalpelagic level below 28,700’ where xenophyophores (the smallest organisms) live. In the Hadal zone at 20,000’-35,850’, the pressure is over 1000 times the surface where there is never light or oxygen. The temperature is 800 degrees but a single cell that is 4” square thrives and there are 700 species. There are still 30 million undiscovered species in the ocean while there is only 1.4 million on land.

Whales are slowly becoming extinct as 25,000 were killed each year in 1800’s until that was mostly stopped and Japan and other countries are still killing them. Of the main whale species, 3 are already gone and 3 are getting close to extinction. We are losing the opportunity to learn from them … just like we are losing this opportunity to learn about animals and plants and trees in the Amazon that are becoming extinct.もっと詳しく