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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 floor, but can be thousands of kilometers in length. There are about 50,000 km (31,000 mi) of oceanic trenches worldwide ...
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. The maximum known depth is 10,984 ± 25 metres (36,037 ± 82 ft ...
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. [ 1 ][ 2 ] The cumulative area occupied by the 46 individual hadal ...
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).
The Peru–Chile Trench, also known as the Atacama Trench, is an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 160 kilometres (99 mi) off the coast of Peru and Chile. [1] It reaches a maximum depth of 8,065 m (26,460 ft) below sea level in Richards Deep (23°10′45″S 71°18′41″W) and is approximately 5,900 km (3,666 mi) long; its ...
The Challenger Deep is a relatively small slot-shaped depression in the bottom of a considerably larger crescent-shaped oceanic trench, which itself is an unusually deep feature in the ocean floor. The Challenger Deep consists of three basins, each 6 to 10 km (3.7 to 6.2 mi) long, 2 km (1.2 mi) wide, and over 10,850 m (35,597 ft) in depth ...
The Pacific Ocean is also an active, shrinking oceanic basin, even though it has both spreading ridge and oceanic trenches. Perhaps the best example of an inactive oceanic basin is the Gulf of Mexico, which formed in Jurassic times and has been doing nothing but collecting sediments since then. [15]
The deep trenches or fissures that plunge down thousands of meters below the ocean floor (for example, the mid-oceanic trenches such as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific) are almost unexplored. [6] Previously, only the bathyscaphe Trieste, the remote control submarine KaikÅ and the Nereus have been able to descend to these depths.