Mariana Trench - In Pursuit of the Abyss

The Mariana Trench sits like a crescent-shaped dent in the floor of the Pacific. A 2,550 km long, 69 km wide fracture that plummets down into a pure black void of the Hadal Zone. At the bottom, it hosts the deepest known location on Earth. The Challenger Deep, 11,033 metres or 36,200 feet beneath the waves.

The trench itself is but one part of a global network of deep scars that cut across the ocean floor. Features that formed from a process called subduction. In the case of the Mariana Trench, the western edge of the Pacific Plate was thrust beneath the smaller Mariana Plate to the west, creating the deep fracture. Molten material then rose through volcanoes near the trench, building the nearby Mariana Islands.