Deepest Areas Ocean Floor

The challenger deep in the mariana trench is the deepest known point in earth s oceans.

Deepest areas ocean floor.

This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. 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 rest of the ocean floor varies in depth. 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.

Altogether the deep sea floor makes up about 71 of the world s oceans with shallow waters such as continental shelves making up 29. 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 most recent descent was made in 2012 by a manned deep submergence vehicle the deepsea challenger. The deepest part of the ocean floor is the marianas trench near the philippines in the pacific ocean.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. The mariana trench or marianas trench is located in the western pacific ocean about 200 kilometres 124 mi east of the mariana islands. 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 tonga trench is the second deepest site in the ocean floor at 35 702 feet below the level of the sea floor.

Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. In most of the world the ocean floor is very deep averaging 3 790 meters 12 430 ft in depth. 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. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time.

It is crescent shaped and measures about 2 550 km 1 580 mi in length and 69 km 43 mi in width. The oceans deepest area is the mariana trench also called the marianas trench which is in the western part of the pacific ocean. The pacific ocean has around 50 000km of convergent plate margins and most of the deepest point located around this place. According to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the trench is almost 5 times wider than it is deep.

Nearly half of the world s sea floors are over 3 000 meters 9 800 ft deep. It is almost seven miles deep or about 35 000 feet. It is located in the south pacific ocean on the northern side of the kermadec tonga subduction zone.