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Oceanic crust is formed at an oceanic ridge, while the lithosphere is subducted back into the asthenosphere at trenches. Oceanic trenches are prominent, long, narrow topographic depressions of the ocean floor. They are typically 50 to 100 kilometers (30 to 60 mi) wide and 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic ...
In the ocean, the aphotic zone is sometimes referred to as the dark ocean. Depending on how it is defined, the aphotic zone of the ocean begins between depths of about 200 m (660 ft) to 800 m (2,600 ft) and extends to the ocean floor .
The Mariana Trench is the deepest known submarine trench, and the deepest location in the Earth's crust itself. [38] It is a subduction zone where the Pacific Plate is being subducted under the Mariana Plate. [3] At the deepest point, the trench is nearly 11,000 m deep (almost 36,000 feet).
Very little is known about the microbial community of the mesopelagic zone because it is a difficult part of the ocean to study. Recent work using DNA from seawater samples emphasized the importance of viruses and microbes role in recycling organic matter from the surface ocean, known as the microbial loop .
The hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches.The hadal zone ranges from around 6 to 11 km (3.7 to 6.8 mi; 20,000 to 36,000 ft) below sea level, and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions.
“The most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe – and rightly so,” Alfred Lansing wrote of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1916 voyage across it in a small lifeboat. It is, of course, the Drake ...
In the deep ocean, marine snow (also known as "ocean dandruff") is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the light -rich photic zone to the aphotic zone below, which is referred to as the biological pump .
“It’s very hard to do research on marine mammals if you don’t see them at sea,” she said. “It’s a bit of a needle in a haystack. You don’t know where to look.”