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The Mariana Trench is an oceanic trench located in the western Pacific Ocean, about 200 kilometres (124 mi) east of the Mariana Islands; it is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. It is crescent-shaped and measures about 2,550 km (1,580 mi) in length and 69 km (43 mi) in width.
Trenches are generally parallel to a volcanic island arc, and about 200 km from a volcanic arc. Oceanic trenches typically extend 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor. The greatest ocean depth to be sounded is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 10,911 m (35,798 ft) below sea level.
In the eastern Pacific, where the subducting oceanic lithosphere is much younger, the depth of the Peru-Chile trench is around 7 to 8 kilometers (4.3 to 5.0 mi). [18] Though narrow, oceanic trenches are remarkably long and continuous, forming the largest linear depressions on earth. An individual trench can be thousands of kilometers long. [3]
Its directly measured depth of 10,714 m (35,151 ft) is third only to the Challenger Deep and Horizon Deep, currently the deepest known directly measured places in the ocean. [3] [4] [5] It lies along the Mariana Trench, 200 kilometers to the east of the Challenger Deep and 145 km south of Guam. [1] [2]
Its average depth is 4,280 m (14,040 ft; 2,340 fathoms), putting the total water volume at roughly 710,000,000 km 3 (170,000,000 cu mi). [1] Due to the effects of plate tectonics, the Pacific Ocean is currently shrinking by roughly 2.5 cm (1 in) per year on three sides, roughly averaging 0.52 km 2 (0.20 sq mi) a year. By contrast, the Atlantic ...
Sonar mapping of the Challenger Deep by the DSSV Pressure Drop employing a Kongsberg SIMRAD EM124 multibeam echosounder system (26 April–4 May 2019). Challenger Deep (CD) is the deepest known point in the Earth's seabed hydrosphere, a slot-shaped valley in the floor of Mariana Trench, with depths exceeding 10,900 meters. [1]
The VTZ corresponds with a part of the Mariana Trough where the crust thickens from 6 to 15 km. The southern VTZ is dominated by fissure eruptions associated with a ridge-like feature, ~30 km long, which rises to less than 2800 m water depth and which is similar to the inflated segment at the southern terminus of the spreading ridge.
[1] [2] [3] The majority of the ocean is aphotic, with the average depth of the sea being 4,267 m (13,999 ft) deep; the deepest part of the sea, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, is about 11,000 m (36,000 ft) deep. The depth at which the aphotic zone begins in the ocean depends on many factors.