We only know a little about the animals in the deepest part of the ocean (known as the hadal zone, named after the ancient Greek god of the underworld – Hades). It’s really hard to get there, and harder to get things back. Most of what we know is from either human observers – like Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the Trieste, or James Cameron in the Deepsea Challenger – or remote cameras on ‘landers’ that are dropped from the surface. A few samples have been returned from these landers, but the animals do not survive the decompression, and the change in temperature (the bottom is usually 4 C – like a refrigerator, while most deep ocean trenches are located in tropical waters – 25-33 C). Scientists have been able to return enough tissues from enough animals to begin to sequence a number of different animal genomes, however, and we will soon know much much more about how animals can survive the cold, dark pressure of these regions.
We only know a little about the animals in the deepest part of the ocean (known as the hadal zone, named after the ancient Greek god of the underworld – Hades). It’s really hard to get there, and harder to get things back. Most of what we know is from either human observers – like Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the Trieste, or James Cameron in the Deepsea Challenger – or remote cameras on ‘landers’ that are dropped from the surface. A few samples have been returned from these landers, but the animals do not survive the decompression, and the change in temperature (the bottom is usually 4 C – like a refrigerator, while most deep ocean trenches are located in tropical waters – 25-33 C). Scientists have been able to return enough tissues from enough animals to begin to sequence a number of different animal genomes, however, and we will soon know much much more about how animals can survive the cold, dark pressure of these regions.