Deepest Areas Ocean Floor

The deepest part of the ocean floor is the marianas trench near the philippines in the pacific ocean.

Deepest areas ocean floor.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. Oceanic trenches in the ocean are long but narrow topographic depressions on the sea floor the deepest parts of the ocean floor. The challenger deep in the mariana trench is the deepest known point in earth s oceans. 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. Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. The rest of the ocean floor varies in depth. The mariana trench or marianas trench is located in the western pacific ocean about 200 kilometres 124 mi east of the mariana islands.

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. The most recent descent was made in 2012 by a manned deep submergence vehicle the deepsea challenger. The trench is 1 554 miles long and 44 miles wide or 120 times larger than the grand canyon. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time.

This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. It is located in the south pacific ocean on the northern side of the kermadec tonga subduction zone. The tonga trench is the second deepest site in the ocean floor at 35 702 feet below the level of the sea floor. 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.

It is crescent shaped and measures about 2 550 km 1 580 mi in length and 69 km 43 mi in width. 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. The maximum known depth is 10 984 metres 36 037 ft 25 metres 82 ft 6 825 miles at the southern end of a. 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.

Altogether the deep sea floor makes up about 71 of the world s oceans with shallow waters such as continental shelves making up 29. The oceans deepest area is the mariana trench also called the marianas trench which is in the western part of the pacific ocean. According to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the trench is almost 5 times wider than it is deep.